


cross my heart

by RainPhee



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (at least as much as possible), (sort of), Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, McBangzo 2018, Minor References to Sexual Content (EXTREMELY minor), Minor Violence, Sad Ending, Sappy Ending, Secrets, Young Hanzo Shimada, its just a sappy love story, omnic prejudice, remembering trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 22:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 24,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14091267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainPhee/pseuds/RainPhee
Summary: Jesse McCree's job was simple enough: infiltrate the prestigious Shimada Clan by gaining the trust of their heir, Hanzo, and obtaining intelligence able to bring the clan down. There were no holds barred, nothing too far for the mission, including seduction. He wasn't too worried about it. He'd done things like this before, and he'd do it again.But nobody warned him that his target could be ten times more enchanting than Jesse ever could be, and nobody warned him that he might be the one to fall in love instead.





	1. opening - mccree's thoughts

The sun is setting over Watchpoint Gibraltar, and the air is silent. Light plays in fields and squares, chunks of yellow and orange and pink, streaking across the sky in a display of vibrant color. No one is visibly outside, for one reason or another- work consumes them, or they are lazing in their bunks, resting after a long day. The only sound is the wind whistling along the cliff face.

A door creaks open, and out of it slips a small, furry form. Tumbleweed flicks her tasseled tail and pads along the side of the building, hugging the wall, as cats are wont to do. She comes to a corner and peeks around it, then dashes to her destination.

There is _one_ person outside, on this chilly sunset evening. He leans on the railing, smoke trailing from the cigar in his hand, hat discarded to one side. The sun plays a color game with his face, highlighting everything in gold and pumpkin, and he squints at the light.

Tumbleweed leaps up on the railing to delicately slink over to him, chirping happily as she rubs at his hands with her face. McCree faintly smiles and, in one smooth movement, scoops the cat up in his arms, cradling her like one would a small child. He rubs her head and fusses over her for a few minutes, straightening the bandanna that is always around her neck. “You’re gettin’ a bit scruffy around the edges, babygirl,” he coos, but yet, half of his attention is elsewhere. “Someone’s gonna need a bath and a trim soon, and it ain’t me.”

She simply chirps, unaware of her master’s turmoil, and McCree sighs, turning his eyes back to the slowly sinking sun. Reaching over, he dons his hat again, lowering it so the brim shades his eyes. The cigar falls from his loose grip and is snuffed out underneath the heel of his boot.

“Y’know,” he says, half to the cat and half to himself, “some people ‘re a blessin’ in disguise. Ya meet ‘em, and you dunno then that they’re gonna be important to ya. Some of ‘em turn out to be life-changers. But I dunno if... if _he_ was a blessin’. Not anymore. Seems more like a curse, now.”

He didn’t want them, but memories flood in unbidden. Memories of a garden dotted with cherry blossoms, of the plush grass underneath a flowering tree, of fairy lights glowing in branches. And more importantly, the person in those places- a voice lilting with an accent both familiar and strange, the shine of sunlight on dark hair, the softness of skin and the way that skin had felt on McCree’s fingers, on his lips...

He shakes himself, trying to dispel the lingering memories, like moths to a candle. They are sweet- too sweet to be right, tinged with pain as they are, they melt to bitterness in his mouth. Something in his chest hurts, in the shape of an X. A heart crossed long ago, a promise he had not broken.

“My ma used to say that the only thing that would get a body in and outta trouble was love.” Tumbleweed mumbles and bumps him again, and he obliges, runs his metallic thumb down her spine. “Well, love’s got me inta this pickle, but it don’t seem like it’s gonna get me outta it anytime soon.”

The cat simply purrs.


	2. briefing

_ Years prior... _

Jesse McCree, agent of Blackwatch, barely even twenty years old and working in one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, watches the clouds go by underneath him. He twines the cord of his earbuds around one finger, the faint beats of old rock music filtering through the mesh. The clouds are patchy, but they fall behind the wings of the plane swiftly, islands of fluff piling up until they eventually disappear. 

Suddenly, his mindless state is broken when something roughly snatches the earbuds directly out of his ears and pulls them out of his grasp.

“Hey!” he complains, then looks up to meet the eyes of- who else- Commander Calida Santillan, one of the two leaders of Blackwatch. Jesse bites his tongue and averts his gaze from the commander’s ferocious glare, tapping his leg with a finger.

“Look at me, Jesse,” Santillan growls, and he gingerly does so. She’s still glaring, and if looks could kill, they’d be spiralling downwards at terminal velocity from the intensity of her gaze. “You know, after what happened last mission, I think I’d be justified in not trusting you with the stupid hat on your stupid head right now.”

“I never saw you leadin’ Gabe’s strike team, or didja just slip my mind?” Jesse retorts, and Calida’s gaze intensifies from destructive to first-degree murder. 

“It doesn’t  _ matter _ , jackass, I’m still your goddamn superior, and I will fucking act as su-”

“Callie, will you calm down?” Now  _ that’s  _ Reyes, sitting in the back row with his feet up. He’s tapping away at a datapad, but he looks up when Calida turns on her heels and sighs so loudly and fiercely that Jesse swears it rattles the bolts of the plane. Everyone in Blackwatch knows that Commander Santillan’s infamous short temper was merely a facade, she wouldn’t hurt a hair on any of their heads and, according to her strike team, was a fair and just commander. But damn, if she wasn’t terrifying as all hell.

“Lay off him,” Gabe says, sliding his legs off from the seat in front of him. “There’s nothing you can do, and he’s right, that generally is  _ my  _ job.”

“He nearly endangered the entire mission!”

“And that’s a change from the normal  _ how _ ?” Reyes stands and brushes his shirt off from invisible crumbs. “He’s perfect for this mission and you know it, Cal. Let him be.”

Calida grimaces, balling her hands into fists. If you look very, very closely, at the border between her body and the scenery, she flickers ever so slightly, like a datapad’s screen. 

“Mission?” Jesse inquires, straightening in his seat. “First I’ve heard of it. Mind tellin’ me what’s goin’ down?”

“Well, for starters, we’re currently heading into Hanamura,” Gabe begins, looking back down at his pad. Jesse starts.

“Hanamura? Did anyone bother to tell Genji that we’re visitin’ his old house?”

“Well, yes and no. He knows we’re going, but he doesn’t know the true nature of the mission.”

“I’m expectin’ to get briefed on that in a hot second, seein’ as I’m the centerpiece of whatever you’ve cooked up.” Jesse crosses his arms and casts a glance towards his earbuds, still caught in Calida’s iron grip. She sneers at him when he notices, sticking a tiny bit of tongue out in an unexpectedly childish move. He does the same.

“Yeah, you’re correct.” Reyes taps at his screen for a few moments, pulling up some sort of image file, then gestures with the pad in Jesse’s direction. He grabs it, inspecting the image that Gabe had given him...

One of the most stunning individuals he had ever seen stares up at him from the blue screen. He’s Japanese, with a rugged, sculpted face, every bone in high, perfect relief. Everything about him is markedly  _ sharp _ , from his keen jawline to the pointed glare he’s putting across. Sheets of ebony-black hair fall just to his broad shoulders, pulled back at the nape of his neck, and the only anomaly in his impeccably molded appearance is a single lock that dips across his face to rest on the bridge of his nose. 

But despite all that, the thing about this mysterious man that captures McCree the most is his  _ eyes _ . They stare out from the screen in a scowl that would give Calida a run for her money, a flinty coldness emanating from every inch of the man’s expression and posture. He looks.... Uncomfortable.  _ Unhappy _ . Those eyes had seen too much, and he couldn’t be much older than Jesse himself. Those weren’t the eyes of a young man just reaching his prime, they were the old, tired eyes of a dragon.

“Who’s... who’s this now?” Jesse stammers a bit, still captivated by the young man’s intense gaze. Gabe stifles a laugh and pulls the screen out of his grip, tapping to something else.

“That was Hanzo Shimada, heir to the Shimada empire and Genji’s brother.” Reyes replies. “Your mission is to find and befriend him, then gather information on his family. Either through him or using him to get close enough to their castle. That part’s up to you.”

“Now, alright.” Jesse sits up finally, leaning onto the arm of his chair. “Normally, I’d be head over heels fer a mission involvin’ me talkin’ to a fine fella like that, but that’s the Hanzo what tried to  _ kill his brother _ . Genji may be an angry asshole, but he’s still my friend. I ain’t doin’ it. I think I’d feel the temptation to hurt him more than the temptation of gettin’ to know him.”

“The choices here are limited, Jesse. And normally, I’d agree with you in a heartbeat, but from what we know from Genji, the Shimadas are infamous for brainwashing those under their control- even their own children. Not only that, there’s a lot of complex cultural things involved here that we, from a Western standpoint, will pretty much never understand.”

“Are ya tryin’ to tell me that Hanzo  _ didn’t  _ try to kill his own brother?”

Gabe sighs. “No, Jesse. I’m trying to say that it may not have entirely been his  _ fault _ , and that he’s most likely not the sibling-murdering, emotionless machine you’re seeing him as.”

“And even if he is? You’re in no place to argue with us right now.” Calida speaks up, crossing her arms over her chest. “The Shimadas are big, powerful, and very, very suspicious of Overwatch. We need this intel and we need it as soon as possible. Not only that, need I mention the thinness of the ice you’re on right now, after the last few missions?”

“I just don’t know how nice I can be, knowin’ what he’s done.”

“Jesse, stop moping. You used to be a  _ spy  _ for  _ Deadlock _ . You’re good at sweet-talking.”

Jesse lets himself smile, just a little bit. “Guess I am.”

“Hanzo Shimada will get his just desserts, but for now, you’ve got to forget it and perform your duty. Why do you think we didn’t tell Genji what we were doing? He’d have snuck on here and tried to kill his brother himself, and we can’t risk that. But you, you have a chance of winning the young Shimada’s trust.” Gabe claps him on the shoulder, and McCree nods. 

“And Jesse?” Calida’s voice has changed since the last time she spoke. She looks at him with no anger in her eyes, only cold, stony seriousness. “You have permission to do whatever is necessary to get to him. This includes non-platonic gestures. But try not to break his heart, all right? We don’t need that kind of drama on our hands.”

Jesse flushes at the prospect of that kind of relationship, and Gabe laughs. It’s a soothing, familiar laugh, and it calms the anxiety building in McCree’s bones. “All right, cowboy, get some rest. We’ll be arriving in Hanamura in about four hours.”

“Will do, Commander.” Jesse pulls his hat over his eyes and leans back, ready to get some shuteye, but inside, he’s staring wide-eyed at the darkness of his hat. He can’t get Hanzo’s dragon eyes out of his mind. They flash on the insides of his eyelids, glowing blue.

He feels like he’s been branded.


	3. welcome to hanamura

The jet lands roughly five hours later and Jesse, through the miracle that was the Blackwatch governmental bypass codes, makes it through the airport in a mere half an hour. Gabe and Calida didn’t even leave the plane, they were arguing over something when Jesse was escorted out and he didn’t want to bother them for fear of Santillan biting his head off. Once he emerges, he’s heavy with bags and the added weight of apprehension, although the luggage doesn’t help. 

Outside, the bright light of the mid-afternoon sun hurts his eyes. His internal clock protests that it  _ must  _ be about midnight, but to no avail. Sunshine beats down all the same, so he shields his eyes with his hat and continues on his way.

Hanamura is a pleasant place, with even, narrow streets paved with cobblestones and buildings that mix old with new. Neon signs flashing on plaster walls, robotic arms transporting crates to upper floors, and the blinking lights of an arcade are all things that Jesse spots as he hugs the wall, making his way down the crowded streets. The people here are lively, chattering with each other as they traverse the complex, twisting avenues of their home. Litter is surprisingly uncommon, although Jesse understands it a bit better when he passes an omnic street-cleaner.

Petals drift gently through the warm air, carried by a faint breeze that blows down the corridors of the city. Jesse catches one in his open palm and admires it for a second, then lets it drift down to the cobbles. Whatever trees the petals are coming from, they can’t be seen, but nonetheless, their pink leaflets stick to every available surface like tiny, delicate decals. 

People notice Jesse, of course they do. He’s, as usual, hard to miss, but he finds it to be the perfect camouflage, despite the discomfort of it all. The people he passes often take a second or even third glance back at him, leaning over to their companions to whisper low, skeptical Japanese. At one point, a woman with short, wavy black hair helping push crates stops in her work to watch him keenly, a cigarette smoldering in her lips. She plucks it out with practiced fingers and remarks something to her co-worker, grinning. 

Jesse has no idea what they might be saying about him- his attire, his mannerisms, all stand out like a sore thumb here. He feels isolated, conspicuous. Someone is beaming a spotlight on him here and he hates it; it itches at his skin and makes him want to run and hide in some dark, dark corner. But he has to, and so he presses on with his head held high.

The address that Gabe has given him leads Jesse to a nook in the wall, a door that looks suspiciously tiny to be a good place of berth. When he pushes it open and goes inside, however, it is much bigger than it appears, all smooth wood and panels of flat, rough paper, painted over with swirling floral designs. There’s a desk ahead of him, and it has a bell, so he assumes the obvious and rings it.

It chimes through the cozy room and crashes are heard from behind a paper screen, then tearing, and frustrated yelling in Japanese. Jesse winces at the sounds, but before he can get too uncomfortable, an omnic woman slides open one of the screens and stumbles to the desk.

“Ah!” she exclaims at the sight of him, then begins eagerly chattering in Japanese, pulling out a datapad from behind the counter. Jesse hisses through his teeth at the words, knowing she’s telling him something important, but it doesn’t change the fact that he can't understand a single word. 

“Uh,” he interrupts, and she cocks her head. “Don’t mean any disrespect, ma’am, but is English possible? If ya know it? If not I can get some kinda dictionary, or somethin’, it’s no trouble-”

The omnic beeps in what seems to be realization, and the next words she delivers make Jesse sigh with relief. 

“What kind of hostel owner would I be if I couldn’t speak more than one language, haha! Welcome, welcome!” Her voice is cheery and high-pitched, and she’s oddly expressive, every movement of her metal body adding to her mood. Two tiny glass cubes dangle from where Jesse supposes her ears would be, if she was a human.

“My name’s Kinzoku, and I run this... establishment! Yes, yes, that one. Do you have a reservation?”

“I think so, yeah. Jesse McCree?”

“Hmm...” Kinzoku scrolls down on her pad, then nods. “Ah! Yes, one mister Jesse McCree. You’re going to be here for a while, right? Says here it’s a year stay. Is that correct?”

_ A year? Gabe expects me to stay here for a year?!  _ “Yep, that’s me.”

Kinzoku nods again, then taps a few things on the screen. “All right! Everything’s paid for and ready to go.” 

She leans over the counter next, nearly tripping on something, but she catches herself on the lip of the object and proceeds to point at things around the room. “There’s travel brochures over there, and over  _ there  _ is some maps and such. Check-in is at ten, although that won’t matter much to you. Oh, yes, and that’s the hostel resident pet! His name’s Fish. Which is Sakana in Japanese. I’m not good at naming things.”

She waves at a fat, slowly swimming goldfish in a tank across the room, which doesn’t notice her whatsoever. “Hi, buddy!”

Jesse tentatively waves at the fish too, which proceeds to ignore both of them quite studiously. Kinzoku giggles.

“Here’s your room key, Mr. McCree. You’re in the first one to the left.” The cheerful omnic hands him a slick plastic card, fairly standard for locks, and points in the direction of his place of berth. She dips her head respectfully. “Thank you for your business!”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks fer lettin’ me stay.” Jesse slides the card into his palm, then tips his hat. Kinzoku twitters at the movement, clearly tickling her. He turns and walks off from the enthusiastic omnic, following her instructions and quickly unlocking the door to a cozy, modest bedroom, where he tosses his bags to a corner and sits on the floor, exhaling long and deep.

He crawls over to his baggage and begins to rifle through it, overturning stacked clothes and pulling out bottles and baggies. No wonder he was given a heaping load of luggage at the airport, if they wanted him to stay here for a whole damn  _ year _ ! He intended to win whatever trust he could from Shimada far earlier than that, so he could head back and forget that this whole thing ever happened.

Jesse’s lip curls as he remembers the intent of his mission. “Want me to seduce a damned brother-killer,” he mutters to himself, pushing aside the bag he was rummaging through and unzipping another. “I ain’t no miracle worker. How’d they expect me to win the trust of an asshole that’d stoop so low as to attack his own kin! Sounds a load ‘a bullshit, but it ain’t like I can argue at this point, is it?”

Yet, despite his angry muttering, he can’t get those blasted  _ eyes  _ out of his head. They’re tattooed into his eyelids, burning in cold blue, and he wonders where the showers are; maybe a good blast of cold water will stun him out of whatever vice-like grip Hanzo Shimada seems to have on his thoughts.

Before he can go back and ask his exuberant hostel-keeper where said showers would be, and maybe some other things concerning food and amenities, something deep in the bag starts pinging urgently, a short, sharp tone muffled slightly by cloth. Jesse begins to hastily tear through the items, finally unearthing a pad glowing with the familiar symbol for a video call. He swipes right, and the symbol bubbles out into the video itself.

As they connect, Jesse takes off his hat and begins to unwrap his serape from around his shoulders, shucking it to the ground. He props the pad up on a rolled-up shirt and is halfway done with strapping off his armor when a cough interrupts him.

“Nice to see that you’re eager to talk to me,” teases a voice from the screen, and Jesse turns to see the grinning face of Alcina Santillan, another agent of Blackwatch and Calida’s cousin. He pouts at her, finishing up the armor removal and setting it down with a faint clang.

“Oh, darlin’, I’m always eager to talk with  _ you _ ,” Jesse drawls, faux flattery flowing from every word. Alcina snorts and waves him away with a swish of her hand.

“Oh, please. You’re the gayest man that side of the Atlantic. Don’t think your sweet-talk fools me any, especially since we’ve been working together so long.”

Jesse grins, peeling other stiff plating off of his normal outfit so he’s in the much more comfortable underlayer. “Yer awfully cordial with me today, ‘Cina. Where’s that foul mouth ‘a yours?”

“We’re in an official and  _ professional  _ channel. These audio channels will be saved for a later date, and honestly, I shouldn’t be teasing you at all. Believe me, I’d  _ love  _ to call you a fuckwit right now, but alas, woe is me, et cetera, et cetera.” Alcina’s typing on something below the chat bubble, her fingers drumming on whatever surface it is, but Jesse’s betting that it’s a keyboard to one of the big computers back at base. He can see the reflection of blue off of the metal band that interrupts the smooth brown skin of her forehead, underneath her dark hair.

“All right, so, this is an intel mission, am I right? You’re going to find and manipulate... oh.” Her face falls in an instant, and Jesse nods in agreement with the mere expression. He knows the feeling.

“ _ Hanzo Shimada, _ ” she sneers, her voice dripping with venom. “What a pleasant guy.”

“Ain’t he just,” Jesse complies, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “I dunno what Gabe thinks I am, honestly. Some kinda miracle worker? Naaaah. Knowin’ what he's done, I’d rather strangle him myself. But, ya know. Can’t do that, or we’ll have people crawlin’ all over us, in a legislative sense of th’ word. Maybe literal too, I dunno.”

“Mmh. The feeling is mutual, buddy, trust me.”

“I ain’t even allowed to be an asshole to him, for fuck’s sake,” he complains. “Waste of time an’ energy.”

Alcina is about to speak when someone yells at her from off-screen. She turns her head to listen, then sticks her tongue out at whoever the culprit was and returns to her post.

“They’re right, they’re right, we have a job to do. Okay, cowboy, this is a standard mission, at least protocol-wise. Every last day of each second month, I’ll check what you’ve gathered. Normal data-drop stuff. There’s a doc open for you, and I’d recommend updating it with any information as soon as you get it. Try to remember that.” Alcina informs him, leaning back on her chair. “Oh, yeah, and I verbally check in via video call in.... six months.”

“That’s an awfully long time.”

“That’s the instructions.” Alcina shrugs. “I think Winston’s worried about possible hacking, or the Shimada-gumi blocking our calls, so it’s safer to do it less frequently. Other than that, it’s standard protocol.”

“Mm. Got it.” Someone on the other end is shouting at Santillan, and she turns again, listening intently.

“I gotta go. See you in a few months, all right? And hey.” She looks at him, smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Find him, get what we need, and you can leave by July and forget that this ever happened.”

“That’s the plan,” he grunts. She nods and then, with a blip to blackness, she’s gone.

Jesse stares at the screen, which has gone back to the desktop, a gray background with the logo of Blackwatch in the center. He stares at it, and thinks again about the young man he had seen on the face of the datapad. 

Then he stands up, brushes himself off and leaves to go ask Kinzoku about the showers.


	4. the wolf of the rooftops

It’s two nights before McCree can get a wink of sleep, addled by jetlag and disturbed by footsteps on the rooftops. Because there are  _ people  _ up there, at night, laughing and running and at one point he thinks some of them have sex above him. That was on the second night, and by then he’s sick of it. So the next time the sun sets and chatter is heard above him, he decides to see for himself what’s going on.

The night air is chilled, but not too sharp, and the cold bites McCree refreshingly as he hoists himself up on the rooftop. Hanamura looks a  _ lot  _ different from up here, lights glinting in the dark, the streets empty and silent. He stands and brushes himself off, looking out over a city painted in blues and blacks. Above him, stars glitter in their inky vault, obscured a bit by light pollution but still firmly there.

But Jesse isn’t alone. Shouting and giggles draw his attention to peruse the skyline, and he swiftly spots them. People are on the roofs, jumping over gaps and pulling each other along, laughing with the exhilaration of being so high above the thoroughfares below. It can’t be legal, what they’re doing, but there’s enough that he supposes it’s not really  _ illegal  _ either. 

He’s in the midst of wondering where to go next when someone calls out, startling him so much that he visibly jumps. Jesse turns cautiously, aware that he’s a stranger here, and  _ keenly  _ aware of the language and culture barrier.

Behind him are three people, all watching him with varying looks of distrust and curiosity. They consist of a man taller than McCree thought a person could get, who was standing next to a woman who looked like she could easily snap the tall man’s neck between her biceps. 

In front of them stands another woman, this one almost familiar. She has short, sharply wavy hair and piercing eyes, glaring at him from behind grey-shadowed lids. A cheap cigarette glows between her teeth, and in a smooth movement she reaches up and catches it between her index and middle fingers, mouth curved in a way that was half sneer, half teasing grin.

“The cowboy from the street,” she continues staring, every word in enunciated, perfect English. Each phrase seems clipped, like she is thinking very, very carefully about her words, keeping them at bay. 

“Uh, howdy.” Jesse feels put-upon under the woman’s steely gaze. 

“I took English for seven years during school, before you ask.” She flicks off the ash at the tip of her cigarette, then brings it back up for a long, low drag. “What are you doing up here, then?”

“I’m staying at the hostel below us, and if ya don’t mind, y’all were irritatin’ me while I was tryin’ to sleep. So I thought I’d come and see what all the ruckus was about.”

“Hm.” The woman dismisses her cronies with a nod of her sharp chin, then inspects him, eyes roving up and down his form. 

McCree is a man well used to prying eyes, and he’s even more used to dealing with folks like her. He reads her in every shift of her head, every movement of her feet. People thought that if they were quiet, they were a closed book. And that was true- there were details about people that didn’t show up in their movements or attire, and there were secrets that could be hidden. But not as many as you’d expect. And with sharp eyes and a sharp wit, you could see someone’s story in the very lines of their skin.

She’s reading him too. He can feel it. That’s all right, though- when you knew how to see something, you knew how to hide it, too.

“My name,” she says next, “is Wolf.”

“And I’m a fuckin’ sugar glider.”

“My real name is  _ unnecessary  _ to this conversation,” she deadpans, and she enunciates it just so, in a way that lets Jesse know where his ears’ll end up if he keeps prying. From her tone, it sounds as if they’ll be quite far away from his head.

“Then call me Joel, sweetheart, and we’ll call it even.” 

“Very well.” Wolf turns away from him and walks to the edge, then sits, dangling her feet over the cityscape. After a moment of taking in the scene before him- the twinkling lights, figures on rooftops, just like him- he goes and sits beside her. 

She blows a last plume of smoke from her lips, and snuffs out the smoldering ember on the terracotta roof. Smoothly, she pulls out a silver case and offers him a cigarette, which he for once denies. She shrugs, lights her own, and blows the fresh fog into the night sky, and then Wolf seems ready to speak.

“So,  _ Joel _ ,” she says, “what brings you to Hanamura?”

Jesse shuffles to get more comfortable, the scent of cigarettes enticing. “Business. What’re you doin’ above a hostel at night?”

“Fucking around with that omnic.” Wolf smirks to herself, seemingly reflecting on some memory. “She’s too sure of herself. Me and my gang- we make sure to take her down a peg.”

“Kinzoku?” he asks, baffled, and Wolf nods. “Why?”

“She’s a metal-head. Nothing in her but circuitboards and wires. She’s too  _ cheerful _ , and it pisses me off.” Her lips curl, baring her canines, and for the first time, Jesse sees where she got the name  _ Wolf _ . “We remind her of her place. Fucking around with her garbage bins, or throwing shit at her windows. Sometimes they need to be reminded of who  _ created  _ them.”

Jesse thinks about Kinzoku, about her happy greeting, the way she had so politely offered her complete help. He was no great fan of omnics, but thinking about the poor hostel-owner bullied every night by people who hated her merely for how she was made... no one deserved that.

“Besides, I need alone time at night. It’s been hard, recently. Ever since Genji disappeared...” She trails off, then takes a drag from her cigarette, looking unexpectedly tired. The darkness makes the shadows under her eyes a deep purple, like old bruises.

“Who’s Genji?” McCree asks, careful to not reveal his prior knowledge of his friend’s identity. Wolf sighed.

“A boy I knew. At first I didn’t trust him, but he was a good man, despite his... upbringing.” She grins, but it’s a bit sad. “We were... what’s the word... fuckbuddies for a while.”

“Oh. Jeez, and now he’s-”

“Gone.” Wolf blows a plume of smoke. “One day he just never came around. That was nearly a year and a half ago. I have a girlfriend now, but I- I still miss him. He was my friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?  _ You  _ didn’t kill him.” 

“So you think he was killed.”

Wolf barks a laugh. It’s a tired laugh, and old laugh, one that’s been repeated many times from the same mouth. It is a laugh with teeth. “What do  _ I  _ think? I think the Shimadas are a bunch of fucking assholes, and I think they’re just crazy enough to kill their sons.”

Jesse watches as she squares her shoulders, muttering to herself in Japanese, before she unexpectedly stands up and stares down at him.

“Listen to me, cowboy Joel. If you meet a man named Hanzo Shimada, you stay the fuck away from him. If my hunch is right- and I’ve never been wrong before-” She shivers, then grits her teeth. “Stay away from him, and stay away from the castle.”

And just like that, the wolf of Hanamura is gone, jumping down to some lower roof and disappearing in the dark. Jesse sits there for a few minutes more, knowing that he wouldn’t see her again, but remaining nonetheless. Maybe he feels something on the wind, something he needed to savor. Or perhaps he was just thinking.

The next morning, though, when a rock has smashed through Kinzoku’s kitchen window, Jesse stops what he’s doing and helps her pick up the glass shards. 


	5. hanzo in the garden

It’s been a week, and Jesse has nothing. He wrote Wolf’s words onto a doc for safekeeping, but it’s not enough. What the populace knows, Blackwatch will know too- he’s not interested in that kind of information.

Yet, one of Wolf’s phrases stick in his mind.  _ Stay away from him, and stay away from the castle _ . The castle... the only castle in Hanamura was one Jesse was loathe to go into, a rats’ nest of their enemies, the Shimadas’ ancestral home. Maybe that’s why McCree seems to feel a magnetic pull to the place, the danger of it enticing and the concept of meeting the elusive Hanzo even more so. So he’s curious, and through this curiosity he makes a discovery that changes the plot of everything.

It happens on a lazy afternoon, Jesse resting in the lobby of the hostel while Kinzoku busily cleans and tends to her home. The place is spotless already, but the hostel-keeper does it anyway, brushing away nonexistent dust and straightening perpendicular papers. She needs something to keep her hands busy, to avoid the crushing weight of boredom. He can appreciate that.

After watching her bustle about for a few minutes, a thought strikes him. “Kinzie,” he asks, for he had taken to calling her by the nickname, “I’ve been hearin’ about a castle ‘round here. Can ya tell me any more about it?”

“A castle?” Kinzoku comes and sits on the sofa next to him, fidgeting with the edge of her dusting rag. “You must mean Shimada Castle! Oh, it’s an incredible place really, thousands of years old. We’re not allowed in, of course, but oh, what a beautiful building it is! I once went to see it, last summer I think-”

Jesse gently interrupts her- he is, by now, well aware of her rambling habit. “If you’re not allowed inside, then how’d ya see it?”

“We’re just not allowed inside the  _ building.  _ See-” She pulls a map from the rack and unfolds it, pointing at a block labeled something in Japanese. “-that’s the castle itself, where the Shimada clan lives. And outside it is a little wall, and that’s the inner gardens. On the outside of  _ that  _ is the outer gardens, and that’s open to the public. It’s a beautiful place, especially now in spring, with the sakura.”

“So I can just... go there?”

“Oh, yeah! All year round. Spring’s my favorite time, but it’s nice whatever the weather really. People even say that sometimes, the Shimadas themselves show up there! Although they’ve been especially scarce recently...”

“The ol’ Shimadas, huh? Well, thank ya kindly, Kinzie.” Jesse stood, doffing his hat. “I think I know somewhere I need to visit.”

And visit it he did. The sky was streaked with streams of thin white clouds, and sunlight fell dappled along his skin, pebbling everything with gold. The gates to the gardens were iron, and as he passed through them, something caught his eye- an ironwrought dragon symbol, welded onto the bars. Even though they had opened it to the public, the Shimadas would not let the populace forget who was in charge here.

The outer gardens of Shimada Castle were a simply structured place, but impressive due to its wide, long range. A gravel path winded between trees and over a small stream that gurgled merrily on its own sinuous path through the grasses. Waterfowl- ducks, mostly, although he spots a few moorhens pecking around the rushes- eagerly took to the water, feasting on breadcrumbs that the visitors tossed their way. Thickets of bamboo and thin-leaved bushes were clumped up along the path, separated by stretches of lush grass speckled with the rich pink flowers of the sakura.

The cherry trees were clearly the jewels of the garden. Each one was crowned with a mass of the rosy petals, sprinkling a gentle rain of them with the slightest breath of wind. As he passes under them, Jesse reaches up to cup the flowers in one hand, letting them fall between his fingers to flutter gently to the earth.

Sound here is muffled, like the cherry petals were swallowing it. He could hear birds singing and the tune of the babbling brook, but everything was softened here. The chatter of the visitors was light, and you felt here the sense of whispers. A loud voice was not acceptable here, surrounded by the sweet scent of springtime. Whispers were the loudest you were allowed.

So Jesse wanders, almost forgetting his goal here. Everything is hushed and muted and mellow, and it puts him at peace. Before he knows it, McCree follows the winding path to the largest tree, placed in the center like a diamond in the middle of a jewel case. The massive sakura is gnarled, ancient, great heavy branches laden with petals reaching for the blue of the sky. The wood has twisted itself around and around over a thousand years, forming a great ceiling of wood and pink velvet supported by a massive grey-brown column. As old as this column is, it still has not yet managed to swallow the stone-carved visage of a dragon at its roots, and the statue curls protectively and stares with mossy eyes.

Everything is still. Even the petals seem frozen in place, and Jesse feels as if he is in a moment locked in time. And, looking back, he probably was; the moment was one that would be etched in his mind forever, a crossing of strings, a meeting of fate.

Because standing in front of the dragon was Hanzo Shimada.

Jesse stops in place immediately, eyes wide and heart pounding. It seems to be the only thing that  _ is  _ moving in this scene, thumping wildly as if it intends to bump right out of his ribs. A million emotions all rush through him at once- anger, amazement, shock, surprise, and...  _ admiration _ . He’s reminded of his mission, and reminded of Genji’s metal body, and also fiercely reminded that Hanzo is extraordinarily handsome, all at the same time. He feels as if he might faint.

And then the contemplative figure turns and sees him, rousing from whatever thought he had, and Jesse is gifted a full view of Hanzo.

He’s shorter than him by at half a head at most, but he carries himself in a manner that suggests he’s stronger than he looks. His hair is the same as in the picture- black, long and tied in the back- and he’s wearing an orange robe stitched with white. Despite the clear divide between the two brothers, they are similar, although their faces bear only vague resemblance. The main thing is their  _ feeling _ . One of Jesse’s most poignant memories of Genji was the intense sense of rage that seeped from Genji’s skin, barely kept at bay inside his malformed body. Hanzo has that same sense to him, but unlike his brother’s roaring, hungry inferno, he feels cold. Glacial. His anger is the ferocity of a January blizzard, the frigid unforgiveness of stone, yet spiked with fragility not unlike ice.

And staring right at him are the flinty eyes from the photograph. Jesse’s brand.

McCree can only watch as Hanzo approaches him, eyes flaring with a sudden fire. Every movement is controlled, and Jesse has no doubts that he’s reading him like Wolf. But he’s different; like him, he’s controlling what stories lay on his skin, keeping it all knotted up inside. Watching Hanzo is like watching a smooth river stone- it betrays nothing about where it’s been. Yet that fragility remains, a brittleness permeating his chilly aura.

Hanzo says something sharp in Japanese, and when Jesse does not react, he grumbles and unexpectedly switches languages smooth as silk.

“How long were you watching me?” he accuses, and the shock of English is enough to break the stupor that McCree’s been under. He blinks, finding Hanzo’s tone to be something he does not at all enjoy.

“Not long, honeybee, don’t worry. I’m just enjoyin’ the sights, same as you.” 

Jesse never thought that a human being could bristle like a porcupine, but Hanzo manages it somehow, and his cold presence becomes absolutely subzero. It was the pet name, probably, but he’s so used to using them that it slipped out. He’d have to curb his tongue in the future, lest the mission crack like whatever bullshit icy shell Hanzo had wrapped himself in.

“Very well,” he eventually secedes, finding no apparent fault in that reason. Then he walks off purposefully and begins to stare furiously at a lily. Jesse smiles despite himself- Hanzo’s petty actions were reassuringly human, and proof that there  _ was  _ some kind of person underneath the snow. And he could feel his eyes on him. Jesse busies himself with the statue, but Hanzo’s eyes burned on his back, and he knew he would break sooner rather than later.

Sure enough, a few moments later, he heard footsteps behind him, and felt a presence at his side. “Why are you here?”

“To see the garden, I told ya-”

“No, no. I meant in Hanamura. You’re not from here, I can tell. You have an accent.” 

“On business, mostly.” He turned slightly to catch Hanzo’s eye, and although the chilly presence had not faded, he was surprised to see genuine interest there. “Doin’ things for a friend. Other things. The name’s McCree, by the way.”

Hanzo seemed to calculate something for a moment- perhaps tallying up how much of a threat McCree was. After a second or two, he nodded and broke eye contact. “Shimada Hanzo. Where are you from, then, mister McCree?”

And just like that, they began to talk. Jesse found that it was surprisingly easy to forget what Hanzo had done, here with the petals falling around them and trading bits and pieces of useless trivia. Their speech was brief every time, but it didn’t need to be much. They ended up wandering together, ducking under leaves and low branches, letting the ambient noise of the gardens eat up the spaces in between their voices. And bit by tiny bit, pieces of Hanzo’s shell chip away, yet still he will not smile.

The pair wanders between some bushes now, the wall of the inner gardens visible between the greenery. Jesse feels on edge, balancing on a wire. Despite the pleasantness of his demeanor now, memories of Genji’s anger and the scars he bore still felt fresh and painful when he looked at his companion. He couldn’t bring himself to truly be kind- not when he still had no concrete proof that Hanzo wasn’t the killer he thought he was.

Suddenly, Jesse was roused from his thoughts by the sound of faint miaows from underneath a bush. Curious, and driven by his love of the feline persuasion, he squats down to peer underneath the leaves, exposing the form of a fat bob-tailed calico, who peers up at him with wide green eyes. A feather lays at her feet, caught on one paw, and she stares with the air of someone who’s been caught sneaking food at midnight- guilty, although she hasn’t really done anything.

“Hello there,” he coos, holding out a hand for her to sniff. Hanzo appears behind him and looks over his shoulder, and, cool as anything, remarks: 

“She bites, by the way.”

Jesse barely has time to grimace before Hanzo’s overly calm warning proves sound, and the calico sinks her teeth into the meat of his hand. He yelps, drawing back and shaking her off, where she remains under the bush, emitting a rich, layered growl. With a toss of her dirt-speckled head, she leaps past him and away into the foliage, baring her fangs as Jesse inspects the two new puncture wounds on his thumb.

“Shit. What’re you doin’ with a demon cat around here?” McCree turns to see Hanzo watching him with an odd look on his face. He frowns.

“What’re you lookin’ at?”

Before he can get any farther with his accusations, Hanzo bursts out laughing, his cheeks going pink as he goes into happy semi-hysterics. His laugh isn’t particularly pretty- he snorts a lot, and covers his mouth with his hand as he doubles over- but before he knows it, Jesse is laughing too, swept up in the amusement.

When Hanzo finally catches his breath, he exhales and inhales deeply, then grins wildly at McCree. “You- you should have seen your face! You looked like you’d seen a ghost!”

“Your cat-” Jesse wipes away a tear from his eye- “is a monster.”

“Oh, she’s not mine. She’s a wild cat who lives here, that’s all. Her name’s Neko. You must have scared her.”

“She scared  _ me _ !”

Hanzo snorts again, giggling slightly. “She did!”

And just like that, the shell breaks, and Jesse feels it go. Suddenly, they are not two strangers treating each other icily, rather, they are two young men laughing over something silly. They’re on equal terms now, he can feel it, and when he looks over, Hanzo is watching him for the first time without the flint-capped eyes of a dragon. Now, he watches him with the eyes of a possible friend.

“When can I see you again?” Jesse suddenly blurts, and Hanzo frowns contemplatively. 

“I can probably come here at midday tomorrow. Why?”

“I- I don’t know. I want to know you. You seem an interesting sort.”

“The same sentiments are on my end, mister McCree.” He smiles again, quick and fleeting, but it’s genuine. “I have to go now. Tomorrow, then?”

“You’ve got my word.” And now they’re both smiling, and Hanzo gives a little wave before he slips off into the garden, the green eating up the orange and black until he disappears from view.

McCree does something similar, ambling away until he reaches the warm, comforting walls of Kinzoku’s hostel. She greets him cheerily, but he’s too preoccupied to notice. The thoughts in his head ricochet around, filling him with warmth like the spring sunlight.

They were not the thoughts of a Blackwatch agent, far from it. 

No, Jesse feels as if he has just made a friend.


	6. more than strangers/call me jesse

Hanzo does not show up the next day.

Jesse is there from midday till dusk, waiting where he met him before. He paces around the tree at least a thousand times, and gets in a staring contest with the dragon statue, who wins easily. And yet Hanzo does not show. McCree admits defeat when the garden starts to close and he hightails it back home, watching the rooftops for traces of their resident wolf, but she does not appear either. 

The next day is the same. Jesse’s beginning to get rather frustrated now, and wonders whether Hanzo is sticking him up. As soon as the thought crosses his mind, he almost instantly banishes it. The look on his face and in his eyes- that was genuine. McCree is very, very good at reading faces.

So, without any other choice, he returns to the sakura once more for a third try. His mission is on the line- at least that’s what he tells himself. Deep down, however, he’s eager to see Hanzo again. When he was with him, something had felt complete, even though his conscience begged him to remember what his new companion had done. If Hanzo was a murderer, Jesse couldn’t say. All he knew was that when he smiled and laughed, well, he felt like he had regained a piece that he never knew was missing.

Three time’s the charm, they say, and it held true. Jesse picks his way through the garden to see his long-missing companion standing before the dragon, just as before. McCree swore that he would question Hanzo about his absence, but at the sight of him, his heart involuntarily leaps with joy. He almost wants to punch it back down, except that the feeling is so nice.

“Where’ve you been?” he calls, not unkindly, and Hanzo whirls on his heel. When he sees Jesse, he grins, even though he can detect a sheen of ice in his demeanor. What had happened in his absence?

“I really am sorry for my delay,” Hanzo apologizes as he walks forwards to meet McCree. His hands are laced behind his back, and he bounces slightly on the balls of his feet, thrumming with energy.

“Don’t worry about it, I don’t mind. Ya don’t get to be me without knowin’ how to wait a little.” (Jesse nearly tore his hair out seventy-three times during the waiting period.) “You seem excited. Somethin’ on your mind?”

“Yes, actually. I wanted to show you something.”

“Then lead the way. I’m right behind ya.”

Hanzo nods and dashes off, occasionally pausing to make sure that he was following. Something had shifted while he was gone- he treated McCree slightly differently now. He was more open, more honest. The layer of ice Jesse had felt melted away almost immediately, leaving Hanzo open to express himself. And something was odd about it, too. Hanzo’s enthusiastic switch to it happened almost instantly, despite the thick shield he had originally put up upon their meeting. Was it that he was unable to let down that shield normally, and so given the chance for expression he seized it? Jesse didn’t know. Hanzo was an enigma, and he wanted to solve it.

But then his mind was occupied by where his companion was taking him. Hanzo had arrived at a wall at the very back of the gardens, on the side where the wall came snuggling up to the side of a house. Back here, the gardens were less tended to, with bushes and trees left to grow wild and twisted. Ivy matted the bricks, and it was here that he went, pulling a crude ladder from among the vines and swiftly climbing it so he leapt onto the roof of the nearest home.

“Up here,” he calls down, and Jesse shakes his head. What was it with Hanamura and rooftops? But nevertheless, he follows Hanzo dutifully, emerging on the terracotta slates and casting a critical eye over the scenery from here at the daytime.

“Was this what you wanted to show me?” he asks, and Hanzo shook his head. 

“No, keep on. It’s not far now, I promise.” 

Carefully, Hanzo makes his way across the tiles, picking across until he arrives at a high cupola on a building that resembles a guardhouse of some sort. The roost is high above any other rooftop in the area, dwarfed only by the castle itself. On the skyline, it forms a great dagger that heightens the scenery.

Hanzo leaps and scrabbles at the railing for a moment before catching himself and hoisting his weight over the stones. McCree eyes the structure carefully, then mimics the process, ending up chest-down on a cool tile floor.

“Welcome,” says Hanzo, and Jesse casts his eyes up to reveal a miniature paradise.

Hanzo’s cupola is covered in plants, from crawling vines over the columns to young trees in terracotta pots and herbs in cracked glass jars. The foliage is positioned on tables and on the railings, and since the roof blocks out most light inside, the plants are angled outwards, leaving a surprising amount of space inside for movement. Along the roof, mobiles of broken glass and dented wind chimes glitter and spin along with hanging paper models, miniature kites and a string of lights that loop around the banisters. Cracked and ancient pebbles, flat stones of colored lacquer, decorate the floor in a darkened mural, but when Hanzo switches on the hanging lights from some secret battery, Jesse can see that it is the fiery wings of a phoenix.

He stands, and something crinkly brushes his head. When he looks up, the glowing fairy lights reveal a suspended paper kite in the form of a great blue dragon, positioned so it looks as if it is flying in its cupola-roof home. 

“How’d you  _ get  _ all this up here?”

“Carefully.” Hanzo smirks, his expression smug. “I worked for weeks. It’s incredible, I know. It’s my favorite place in Hanamura.”

“Not the castle?” Jesse asks tentatively. Hanzo’s eyes go dull. 

“No.” That’s all he has to offer, and he turns away then, leaning on the railing to look out over the vista. 

Silence. Jesse feels chillingly aware that he has said the wrong thing. Quietly, he goes and stands by Hanzo’s side, looking curiously out from the lofty perch.

He can see why Hanzo likes it so much. The blue sky stretches above the terracotta roofs, streaked white with clouds and the thin lines of jets. You can see everything from up here- the birds that squabble over tiles, the shifting heads of people far below, humps of buildings and homes lumped together. If he squints, Jesse fancies he can see the skyscrapers of the nearest city, Tokyo, on the horizon, jutting up like a stack of rocks in a brick-laden sea.

“It’s beautiful up here,” he comments softly.

“Yes.” Hanzo falls silent again, and McCree curses under his breath. He thinks fast, and points to a patch of open space in the buildings, like a plaza of some form. 

“What’s that?”

Hanzo leans out a little more to see what he’s pointing at, and a little bit of the spark returns to his eyes. “That’s the market. It has a proper name, but nobody ever really calls it that anyway.” He chuckles, and there’s something akin to nostalgia in his eyes, like he’s reflecting on a treasured memory. “They sell good matcha cakes there. I used to love them.”

“Used to?”

“I haven’t had one in years. It doesn’t- doesn’t matter.” He turns, leaning his back on the railing now and crossing his arms over his chest. The black hair falls like a curtain, smooth and sleek, and Jesse is gripped with the powerful urge to stroke his fingers through it. He quells the desire, knowing that it would be rude without Hanzo’s consent. 

“You know, I could go get you one. If ya wanted me to.” Hanzo seems startled by the offer, and his eyes slide over to Jesse, watching him carefully again. Maybe he’s searching for deceit. But McCree keeps his face open and honest, because he is honest. He really would get him a cake, if he wanted to.

“No thank you.” And like magic, the corners of Hanzo’s mouth quirk up in a small, sweet smile. “But that’s kind of you, mister McCree.”

“You know,” Jesse grins back, “you can just call me Jesse, if you’d like.”

And just like that, they were off again. They talk about things both big and small, about interests they share and do not share, about the world around them. Hanzo is passionate about archery, he discovers, and the two spend a little time bonding over marksmanship, sitting on the cool tiles of the hidden cupola. McCree responds to Hanzo’s animated outburst with one of his own, about animals, which he loves. The look on Hanzo’s face as he listens to Jesse wax poetic is charming and makes him almost flush; his eyes are bright and intent on him, drinking up every word. 

They tell stories- Jesse of things that happened when he was young, of the iguana that lived in his house when he was sixteen, of his older sister Isobel and her ferocious scraps defending their home and honor, of his old mother who was just about the damned bravest person that Jesse had ever met. Hanzo’s stories go closer to the lines of rumor and gossip, of things he heard while slipping behind bushes in the garden or behind a stack of baskets in the market, stories vibrant with the life that hums in Hanamura and spinning webs that form just a fraction of each living being that gave it that rich vitality.

The day whiles to close, and Jesse barely remembers the transition from one to the other before he is standing back in the cupola, facing Hanzo to spin the stories and reveal, once again, the fractions of themselves avaliable. And it happens again, and again, and again. They meet in the garden and Hanzo spins him away, and they sit in their perch above the world and talk for hours and hours. Jesse is constructing a mosaic much more intricate than the phoenix emblazoned on the floor, one made up of the colored pieces of the person that is Hanzo Shimada. He watches it grow, and it glitters, and it is  _ beautiful _ .

One day, Jesse hides a paper packet in his free hand, the white crumpling a little in his fist and its contents moist and pliable. When they are situated on the floor, plant tendrils chasing each other over cracked stones, he takes it out and unwraps it, presenting the gift to his companion.

It is one of the matcha cakes he mentioned, from the market, The look in Hanzo’s eyes is not one he can entirely decipher, but there is a pleased glitter there that gives McCree the courage to press on.

“Now I know you seem ta associate this cake here with a painful memory,” he begins, and puts it down gently on the floor. “But I like spendin’ time with you, and I wanted to show it. ‘Sides, I’m mighty curious to see if I like it too. So maybe... you can start associatin’ the cake with me, instead, and we can share that enjoyment together.”

For a moment, Jesse thinks that he’s crossed the line. Hanzo’s eyes are dark with conflicting feelings, and for a moment he seems lost for words. He was afraid of being balanced on that wire again, and here he is, standing at the precipice of being pushed onto another.

But then, that smile-  _ oh,  _ that sweet honest beautiful, beautiful,  _ beautiful  _ smile- and Jesse knows that he did the right thing. 

“Thank you... so much, Jesse.” The way Hanzo looks at him next, bright with gratitude, makes him weak at the knees. “I think... I’ll enjoy making it better with you.”

He breaks off a moist hunk of cake, smearing his fingers with icing, and pops it in his mouth. A wanton groan escapes him, and he smiles, even though his teeth are speckled with green.

“It’s still good, it’s still good,” he confirms, and pushes the cake over to Jesse. “Your turn.”

And so they trade bites, savouring the unique flavor of good matcha, and Jesse barely notices that he’s not strangers with Hanzo any longer. They’re something more than strangers, maybe stronger than friends. A bond has been forged, one that could not be broken. A romantic might call it the red string of fate.

Jesse feels it, and smiles.


	7. the light show

“There’s something I want you to see,” Hanzo says, a few days later, as the two stand on the edge of the balcony and lean out to feel the breeze. Jesse turns towards him, one arm still on the cracked wall. His Deadlock tattoo itches against the stone.

“And what’s that?”

Hanzo reaches over and grabs a leaf between index finger and thumb, then begins to methodically shred it, mindlessly tearing it apart at the veins. “Tonight, in a park not far from here, there is something special going on. A light show. It’s hard to explain, but it happens every year, and it is quite a sight. I want you to see it with me.”

A light show. Jesse’s heard of them, grand spectacles created with hard-light that shimmered and twisted in the air like godly creations. He wondered what kind of things were shown here in Hanamura, whether they would make dazzling displays of geometry or perhaps living things, shifting their way across the night air with the semblance of breath.

The idea of seeing it with Hanzo at his side was... intoxicating.

“Sure, I’m game,” he answers, crossing his arms. Hanzo grins triumphantly and leans out to scatter the bits to the breeze, slips of green falling from his exposed palm to be whipped away in the wind. McCree momentarily wonders where they will end up.

“It’s at half past eleven tonight, at the garden lake,” Hanzo informs him. “I expect to see you there promptly, Jesse.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, darlin’.” The pet name slips out of his mouth before he can catch himself, and he winces, preparing himself for Hanzo’s normal sudden brusqueness at Jesse’s endearments. 

But it never comes. He looks over, preparing for the worst, and instead sees a sight he will savor for years to come. Hanzo smiles gently in a way Jesse hasn’t seen before, and it’s hard to see in the daylight, but he swears that a hint of pink is on his cheeks. 

“Don’t flatter me,” he says, and his voice quavers as if he’s attempting to sound  _ un _ flattered. “Is it so much to ask that my... friend accompany me somewhere?”

It’s the first time he’s ever referred to him as a friend, and McCree feels like he’s just melted.

“Well? You’re staring at me like a fool,” Hanzo shifts so he’s leaning side-first on the wall, arms crossed and a silly smile on his face. Jesse is suddenly feeling very affectionate indeed, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from snuggling up close to the other man. “I recall you weren’t able to finish your story yesterday, the one about the... cassowary, was it? I’d like to hear it now, if you’re willing.”

So Jesse spins his tales and Hanzo returns his own in earnest, like they always do. McCree is a mess of feelings, quite a few he can’t really identify, and he feels simultaneously uneasy and thrilled with it all. The sight of Hanzo smiling and laughing in front of him, bringing up a hand to cover his mouth when he chuckled, looking at Jesse with wide and sparkling eyes; it made his head spin and his heart flutter in a way it hadn’t before. What the hell  _ was  _ this?

The sun sets, the two depart, and McCree is left to wait in his hostel room, staring at the few tidbits of information he’s put in his Blackwatch doc. 

Kinzoku locks the hostel doors at eleven, but McCree is more than prepared for that. He hoists himself up through the skylight that he had escaped from that night long ago, and shimmies down to the ground, landing as quietly as he can on the top of a dumpster and finally to the dark cobbles. The air is crisp, and Jesse pulls the black serape tighter around his shoulders as he weaves his way to the garden gate. Above him, playing on the rooftops, he hears the laughter and shouts of people he does not know.

He finally reaches the gate at quarter past, a bit frantic that he would be late. There he reaches his second barrier: the gate is locked.

“Aw, fuck,” he mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. Now what? The walls were far too high and sheer for him to climb, although maybe he could get over if he jumped from a nearby building- but what if he hurt himself on landing, or the streets were too wide for him to make it? The cupola building might do the trick, but-

“Jesse!” a voice hisses, and McCree looks up from staring at his feet to see Hanzo behind the gate, his eyes glittering and his grin as bright as a star. Jesse feels like he’s just gone completely boneless just from seeing him. “You came!”

“Of course I did, honey.” 

The look in Hanzo’s eyes makes this whole reconnaissance mission worth it. Swiftly, he slips his hand between the bars and clicks something, and the gate swings open just enough that McCree can squeeze by. After that’s done, Hanzo locks the gate again and turns to him, smiling with such delight that it makes Jesse glow on the inside.

“You came,” he repeats, hushed, as if he can’t believe it. McCree doesn't say anything. He feels he doesn’t need to. Hanzo’s smile tells him everything he needs to know.

“This way,” Hanzo whispers, and before he knows it, Jesse’s hand is in his and he’s being pulled through the dark undergrowth. He can feel Hanzo’s pulse through his fingertips and he grins giddily, feeling a bit like a teenager with his first crush. But that was ridiculous- it was just  _ Han _ . His friend. Nothing more.

The leaves fall around him, and invisible twigs scratch his arms. Then, just for a moment, he loses sight of Hanzo completely as he disappears into something behind the greenery, but that only lasts a second until McCree is pulled out into the open again.

“We’re here.” Hanzo murmurs, eyes trained on the darkness of the night sky above them. Currently, the only things decorating it are the heavy jewels of stars far, far away, but they gleam in Hanzo’s eyes when he looks at him excitedly.

They’re standing on a hill bracketed by thick bracken, seemingly impassable from the outside, Hanzo’s hidden path only visible from the top. The hill was crowned by a single tree, some kind of gnarled oak, and the grass around it is lush and taller than usual. Flowers stick above it slightly, bells colored a pale lavender that looks ghostly in the moonlight. Hanzo leaps ahead of him to stand on the tree’s gnarled roots, watching over the land below like a king of the darkened midnight scenery.

Below them is a great swathe of water, a large man-made pond more than big enough for swimming. The shining dots of the stars were reflected in it, making the dark surface twinkle like starstone. Jesse could see the mouth of the gardens’ skinny river, where the lake fed into it so it could twine its way through the trees and eventually tumble down the cliff side where Hanamura was perched. Across the lake, far from them, was a set-out plaza dotted with lanterns and the tiny forms of people, chatting and mingling freely. McCree strains to hear them, but they are a long way off and he can only discern the faintest of whispers.

“Ain’t that the place we’re supposed to be?” he asks Hanzo, who chuckles and shakes his head.    


“No. I'd rather not be chatting with a bunch of noblesmen, drinking cheap wine and hearing about which daughter they’re going to be marrying off next.” He looks at Jesse from the side, almost teasingly. “Besides, I’d prefer to be alone with you, no matter who the company was.”

That sentence effectively cages Jesse’s tongue for the next five minutes. He sits in the thick grass next to him and feels his skin burn, hating the fact that it was. Hanzo was just teasing him, he knew that. He liked to rile Jesse up, he always had. So why was it getting to him like this now? His friend’s eyes are trained dutifully on the sky, and he so desperately wants them to be on  _ him _ .

“Ah!” Hanzo stands eagerly, his face angled out towards the sky, a look of rapture on his features. The crescent sliver of the moon does little to illuminate his face. “It’s starting!”

The light show commences slowly, beginning at the opposite side of the lake with a faint shimmer, like a pale and sunken aurora. It billows across the surface of the water, almost unnoticeable until it flares up in a great curtain of shimmering light, searing the reflective surface with intense illumination that lit up the liquid as if it was full of daylight. It leaves dizzying spots in McCree's eyes, and he has to momentarily hold his hand up to shield himself from the glow. Next to him, Hanzo grins delightedly, his face pale with blue light.   
  
Finally, it dies down, and the aurora coalesces into a long, glittering line, bulking up with more light as it spirals above the lake. The performance is clearly meant for the onlookers on the opposite side, but the creature still loops close enough that Jesse sees the faint pattern of scales on its hide and the dots of light at one end, brighter than the rest, looking for all the world like a pair of ethereal eyes.   
  
After a handful of moments collecting itself, the creature coils in the center of the lake and bursts outwards, stretching its jaw in a mighty roar that, if it were real, would sound like thunder itself. Whiskers longer than its body sink below the surface of the water, the dragon's claws flexing and its triumphant head radiant in the moonlight that reflects off its hard-light surface. As McCree and his companion watch, the dragon leans down to sniff at the people on the plaza, and he picks up the faintest screams of surprise and amusement from the other side. The creature is so massive that its lashing tail is mere inches away from the hill, and Hanzo reaches out for it for a few moments, his fingers nearly brushing its fur.   
  
Seemingly content with terrifying the onlookers, the dragon rears up again, lets out another silent roar faked by speakers hidden in some bush near the plaza, and bursts into tiny fragments, like a glass statuette. The fragments crash down into the water, and Jesse and Hanzo lean over to see that they have transformed into gleaming fish, dashing among the waves.   
  
The light show goes on for the better part of an hour. The dragon reappears multiple times, forming and unforming at will, dissolving into lesser creatures before reconstructing itself out of their bodies as they flock together. Once, huge tigers roll and play across the lake's surface, only to shatter into geometric snowflakes and coalescing into a singular massive rooster. Another time, a child with some sort of instrument forms out of the diamond dust, folding huge sheets of translucent paper around him to shape the battling forms of gods and monsters. McCree is spellbound throughout, eyes practically glued to the surface of the lake, belly-down on the grass. The only times he's not watching the show is when he's watching Hanzo instead, and sometimes he feels that the sight is more beautiful than the hard-light creations below.   
  
All good things must come to an end, however, and when the dragon reappears, twining its enormous body across the water and dipping through its surface, Jesse knows that their time is almost over. It makes one last cycle across its surface, and when it passes them, air crackling around it and the scent of heat heavy in the chilled air, Jesse swears that its supernova-eyes trace over him and Hanzo, if only for a moment. Then it's gone, facing the patrons again and releasing its loudest roar yet.   
  
And then it explodes. It bursts in a flash of light that leaves an afterimage on McCree's retinas, and the entire world goes a searing white. When he finally opens them again, his eyes adjust slowly, but quick enough that they catch the tiny particles of light, blue and shimmering like real-life stardust, sprinkling over the landscape.   
  
McCree can't move. He can't speak. His tongue is heavy in his mouth, and the idea of speech feels distinctly wrong here, hushed as the night is after the gleaming spectacle. The hard-light dust shines in tiny stars wherever it lands, dotting grass and greenery with tiny diamonds and making the dark world around them into a spacescape.   
  
And sitting among it is Hanzo, legs to the side in the grass, mere inches away from the drop into the lake below. Hanzo is sitting there, Hanzo the beautiful, Hanzo the playful, Hanzo the smart and funny and regal and ten times more enchanting than the light show could ever even hope to become. He sits there, among a landscape decorated with its own personal galaxy, a god of the world around him. Sparks twinkle in his dark hair, glittering on his shoulders, spangling him with ethereal beauty.   
  
As McCree watches, Hanzo lifts his hands up to the dusting air, and he can see the slide of silk over his skin as his palms fill with diamonds. He can see every smooth muscle, every intimate detail, the curve of dark ink poking from underneath cloth on his left arm, the sweet looping of his hair, the sharp profile of his face as he leans his head towards the night sky and cups all its jewels in his fingers. The stars are nothing compared to the lights in his eyes.   
  
And that's when Jesse McCree realizes that he is hopelessly, effortlessly, heart-wrenchingly in love.


	8. data drop/you never forget

Jesse hadn’t stayed up late thinking about a boy since he was twelve, but by god, here he was doing it now. Kinzoku calls lights out at midnight, so he was lying alone in the dark, the only source of illumination being the moon-framing skylight. Ever since he went up on the roof and met her, above had been unusually silent. He wonders, distantly, if it was Wolf’s doing.

Oh, but then his memories stray back to last night- the light show, the sparkle in Hanzo’s eyes and the glitter in his hair as he cradled the lights of a miniature universe in his palms. He had looked like a king- a god- a being stunning beyond all compare, composed out of motes of stardust and ice, and when his hands had filled so much that solar systems were slipping out between his fingers, he had turned to McCree and he had  _ smiled _ ...

Jesse throws a hand over his face and groans. He feels hot and embarrassed, like some green teenager doe-eyed over his first crush. He was an adult,  _ dammit,  _ and so was Hanzo. He was too old for this kind of thing.

Yet the merest thought of Hanzo made his blood run hot and cold, and he wanted so many things that were impossible to have, and  _ fuck _ .

Just...  _ fuck _ .

Before he continues on his needlessly sappy tangent, something interrupts him. He had thrown the datapad to the side several days ago, and now it glowed softly in a pile of laundry, beeping incessantly. The sound rouses him out of his stupor, and he groggily crosses the room, rubbing at his hair, which feels coated in oil. Jesse hates feeling dirty like this. He’ll have to take a shower as soon as he’s done with whatever this bullshit was. 

When he unlocks the screen, two notifications pop up:

_ Alcina @ 1:07  _

_   hope you’ve got something good for tomorrow cowboy _

_ Alcina @ 1:07 _

_   you havent been updating and callies gonna get mad if it stays that way _

Updating? What was he supposed to be updating  _ on _ ? That he might have gotten himself into a pickle falling for the most stunning man he had ever laid eyes on, someone unattainable while he was-

Oh.

_ Oh. _

Jesse nearly drops the pad. He had forgotten. How in the fuck had he  _ forgotten _ ? He was Jesse McCree, agent of Blackwatch, sent to Hanamura to gain intel by manipulating the son of the Shimada clan, Hanzo. That was the whole reason behind all this. That was why he was here, was how they met, was the driving force behind  _ everything _ .

And he had  _ forgotten.  _ Somehow, some way, he had gotten caught up in all of Hanzo’s stories and laughs and smiles and the ever-so-important detail- that he was here strictly on work, that he was supposed to be a stern and sly manipulator- had slipped his goddamn mind. Not only that, he had let them sway him. He had  _ let  _ Hanzo affect him with his charm and now all Jesse wanted to do was  _ fucking kiss him _ . 

He was better than this. He was a professional, damnit, not a horny teenager who let himself be swept away by any pretty boy he laid eyes on.

And yet.

McCree lays on his bed for a few minutes more, hating himself, hating everyone around him, but not managing to hate Hanzo just yet. It takes a moment to realize the gravity of this situation.

He has information on Hanzo, and he has information on Hanamura. It’s not much, but it’s something. So, technically, up to this point, he’s done his job. When Alcina calls tomorrow, he can feed her the intel and do his duty, and he’ll be in the clear for the next two months. So on and so forth. He could get very far into the Shimada’s inner workings from where he is right now, at this position of trust he has.

But the mere thought of it leaves a sickly tang in his mouth. Hanzo  _ likes  _ him. He opened his heart to him, told him stories, let on more of himself than Jesse feels most people see. He had trusted McCree with those jewels he had given, the jewels that formed the great mosaic of his identity, his spirit. For someone like Hanzo, that must have been hard. If Jesse gives him away, he’ll crush that precious, fragile trust like so much brittle shards, and it would destroy him.

Jesse doesn’t know if he can bring himself to choose. One one hand, the duty he’s been given, the assignment to people he considers a family. And on the other... the stars that had sparkled in Hanzo’s eyes when he had arrived to the light show. 

He doesn’t know.

He groans, rolls over and curls himself tightly in the blanket. 

Daylight comes far too quickly for his liking, and Jesse wakes just as conflicted as he was in the night. Kinzoku greets him cheerily at breakfast like always, but he can’t stomach anything today. His head is filled with stormclouds, and his limbs feel heavy, like they’re sculpted out of lead. His tattoo, a mark he had kept in an effort to remind himself of what he had done wrong, burns on his skin. It’s at times like these that he wishes he’d had the thing removed years ago.

His feet move practically on their own, and there he is, standing at the dragon’s feet in the garden. And, more importantly, there  _ he  _ is, the man with the sweet smile and soft hair and perfect  _ everything _ , and Jesse feels his heart melt in his chest when he turns around to grin at him.

“Jesse!” 

He’s suddenly noticing a million tiny details that he’d seen before, but not truly understood how they all combined to form Hanzo, miniscule pieces interlocking into one. There was a little upturn to his eyebrows, and right now he was smiling and it was a bit twisted on the left side, a few nigh-invisible premature wrinkles on his forehead and the shift of cloth that exposed the corner of his tattoo at his strong collarbone, not to mention the way that there was always one lock of errant hair falling across his nose and the curvature of his hand and-

“Jesse?” Hanzo snaps him out of it by walking closer and nudging him gently, confusion in his eyes. “Are you alright?”

“O-oh! Yeah, sweetheart, I’m fine.” His legs had apparently been walking on their own, and had found the familiar path to Hanzo’s hideout, so now the pair ambled side-by-side through the castle gardens. The time of the cherry blossoms had come to an end, and the only evidence they had ever been was a few browning clumps clinging to branches, hidden amongst purple leaves. 

Jesse can't keep his focus. They walk their usual path, his feet know it, but his eyes are all Hanzo, Hanzo, Hanzo. Every little movement, every plane and angle, it’s all so alluring that McCree can hardly stand it. He’s  _ drunk  _ on him.

Before he knows it, he’s hoisting himself over the ledge and swinging into Hanzo’s cupola-  _ their  _ cupola. The area is now decorated with little items, trinkets the two have them have collected for each other. Dangling from a red thread on the ceiling is a model of a fragile red fish that Jesse stumbled across last week. Sitting in various flowerpots are tiny carved, expertly painted wooden wolves that Hanzo had eagerly shown to Jesse one Saturday afternoon. Above them, the dragon kite has a mate in the form of a bronze bird, hollow, gliding on every stray wind that makes it underneath the cupola’s roof. They have constructed an area all their own, bits and pieces of each other on display in a home of their own making.

_ God,  _ he’s sappy today.

It’s easier than he thought it would be. Every part of Jesse feels like it’s on fire, and he’s sure that he’s sitting weird, acting oddly, talking funny so that Hanzo is bound to notice. But he doesn’t. 

“Look at this.” Hanzo interrupts his internal tirade and reaches into his shirt, then brandishes a square letter made of red paper. There’s kanji on the front, which he of course can’t read, and Hanzo has a conspiratorial smirk on his face as he triumphantly displays his prize.

“What is it?” The tiles are cool under McCree’s hands as he lowers himself down to sit across from his companion.

“It is,” Hanzo’s smirk widens, “a love letter. Addressed to me.”

Jesse’s heart sinks down his throat, and he has to struggle to keep his face neutral. He doesn’t like the way the statement makes him feel- all sorts of emotions are roiling in his gut, and he scrapes his teeth together, rubbing his tongue over the sharp edge of his canines.

“Oh. Right.”

“It’s from a girl from the north of town, by the name of Umiko, I believe.” Hanzo pokes the pad of his thumb with the corner of the envelope, the paper pushes in the soft skin there and it fills in like memory foam. “It’s unfortunate that I have to disappoint her, through. I hope she finds a boy more.... Suited to her tastes.”

A spark kindles in Jesse’s breast. The phrasing, the tentativeness of what he’s saying- if Hanzo’s trying to say what he thinks he is...

“What- what’dya mean by that?” 

Hanzo purses his lips, raises one of his hands and drops it again. “I am- this is an awkward thing to say, but I wanted to say it, even though it’s difficult...”

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “Jesse, I don’t like women. I like... men. Exclusively men.”

Jesse wants to break into song right then and there. He wants to grab Hanzo by the hands and spin him around and around and see the way the light catches his eyes and hair. He wants to dip him low to the mosaic of their cupola and kiss him, long and deep, and see how he tastes.

But he does none of those things. Instead, he just smiles, so widely he thinks his cheeks might snap, and reaches forwards a bit to place his hand over Hanzo’s. His knuckles run underneath Jesse’s fingers, mostly smooth but a little bit rough, and he wishes that he could hold this hand every day.

“Hey. Looks like this is another thing we’ve got in common, huh?”

Hanzo’s eyes light up, and he grins widely in a way Jesse has never seen before. He reaches up and places his hands over his, practically glowing with happiness.   
  
"I knew it," he crows, and for a moment Jesse sees another Hanzo, one prideful and competitive, and overly pleased that his guess was right. "I wasn't sure, but I  _ knew  _ I was right. Haha!"   
  
"You got me," McCree replies, and Hanzo laughs again, so joyfully and hard that he starts snorting a bit, and drops Jesse's hand to cover his face. McCree has never felt as light and airy as he does now. His heart has been replaced with whipped cream, soft and melting with the unadulterated joy of this, of everything, of  _ Hanzo _ .   


Somewhere along the line, they begin talking about crushes. They're lying down, backs pressed against the cool tile, Hanzo's fingers tracing the lines in the mosaic as he angles himself on his side to watch Jesse. His eyes sparkle in the light that lances through the open sides of the cupola, and his companion is reminded of the night where the stars fell to earth, just for him. Magical.   
  
"The first time I liked a boy," Hanzo begins, and his hands have dexterously found some stray leaf that has fallen from the vines that crawl up the pillars; he plays with it as he speaks, rolling it and flattening it as he chooses. "I was in school. It was a private school, far fancier than I think I really deserved, and he was an upperclassman. I couldn't stop staring at him, no matter how hard I tried."   


"Sometimes it's like that," Jesse murmurs as he watches him, trying to emblazon Hanzo's face into his memory forever, so he can see the beauty captured there for eternity.    
  
"It took me two years after he had left to realize that I was in love." Hanzo shakes his head, grinning to himself. "I felt foolish after. It was so obvious, but because everyone expected me to like girls, I simply went along with it, and fooled myself..."   
  
"It's a journey," McCree agrees, tearing his eyes away to look up at the ceiling for a moment. "Ya never forget your first crush, even if it's shitty. I think mine was when I was about... ten, maybe? Little older, I'm not sure. Damn heart of mine got me in a real pickle, let me tell you."   
  
"Ooh, do tell me." Hanzo rolls onto his belly, falling closer to him, but he doesn't move away. Jesse's heart, the damned thing, beats faster at the sudden proximity, and he feels suddenly hyperaware of everything he does. But he said he'd tell the story, so he does, and Hanzo's eyes trained intensely on him, sparkling with interest and affection, feels incredible and agonizing all at the same time.   


"Well, I was a little thing who had never fallen in love before, never got a damn crush, even, so I basically followed the boy around like a puppy dog on a string. He could tell me to do anythin' and I'd do it, no matter what." Jesse sighs, rubbing his neck with embarrassment. "That whole thing ended up with me hidin' in a ditch from coyotes at half-past midnight, stuck silly with cactus thorns. I was lucky my sister found me before the sun rose."   


Hanzo laughs lightly, but not in a teasing way. He seems more concerned than anything. "What on earth happened?"   
  
"Ahh, damn kid dared me to do it, and I listened like the fool I was. Spent hours gettin' the prickles out afterwards, and my old lady nearly scolded me half to death."   
  
There was a beat of silence that Hanzo broke with a question- "I didn't know you had a sister."   
  
"Yeah. Back in the day it was just me, her and my ma, against the world." A sudden reminder of what had happened to those people rushes to his throat, and McCree nearly chokes on it. "I don't- I don't really wanna talk about them, sugar. Ain't ready for that yet."   
  
Hanzo nods quietly. "I understand. I apologize for the intrusion."   
  
"Ain't your fault, but... thank you."   


They fall silent again, but it's companionable, quiet with thought and the comfort of having a friend close by. Hanzo is near enough that Jesse would barely have to move an inch to stroke his hair, to curve his hand gently around his face, to lean in and see how his lips taste on his own-   


He nearly flinches back as he realizes that he is moving in, unconsciously, hand shifting across the stones to reach for him. He goes red almost immediately, feeling his face and chest grow hot with shame. With any luck, Hanzo didn't notice, and he'd be spared an embarrassing conversation at the very least-   


Something touches his hand, something soft and gentle, and as Jesse watches, Hanzo reaches up to link their fingers together, still and so careful that he feels like he's being treated like glass. They're so close- a few inches of air between them, that's all, connected by interlaced hands. His palms are smooth against McCree's rough ones.   


Jesse looks into his eyes, and Hanzo looks right back. He looks in, and Hanzo lets him. He sees the stars there, the sparkling ones that shone in them when he looked at Jesse on the night of the light show. He looks deeper, and sees his happiness at sharing the moment with him, the tension and nervousness, and deep down, some old, cold hurt, buried down in his heart like a knife wound. Yet it still beat, softly, one-two, one-two. The pattern of life.   
  
And as he watches, something changes. Those looks all coalesce as he sees into Jesse in return, and suddenly, Hanzo is watching him with a look in his eyes that Jesse doesn't understand. It scares him, it thrills him, and he sees himself reflected in it, but he doesn't know what it means, not yet.   
  
Hanzo notices it, and just like that, the moment shatters. Hanzo pulls away, leaving his hand cold and his mind reeling, and he stands up, practically stumbling back.   


"I have to- I have to go. I'm sorry."   


McCree sits up, wondering if he did something wrong. "It's alright- if I overstepped my boundaries or anythin', just say so and I'll try to stop-"   


"No, no, no. It's not your fault. You're fine. I promise." He hops over the wall, but pauses, looking back ever so slightly before he disappears.    
  
"I'll see you tomorrow."   
  
And then he's gone, leaving the memory of his hands on Jesse's and the cowboy's heart full of a strange, unusual, unexpected hope.


	9. i like you

Jesse glares at an empty doc, and drums his feet on the floor.

It had gotten worse. He can’t close his eyes now without seeing Hanzo, smiling at him, with stars in his hair, the look in his eyes on the cupola floor, he can’t rest without feeling Hanzo’s hands in his own. It’s maddening, and makes Jesse’s very core ache with a deep, strong  _ need  _ to see him again, to feel their hands touch, to run his hands through his hair and press his lips onto his skin...

And worse than that, that feeling is battling another, the deep-seated sense of duty instilled in him by his commander. He  _ likes  _ Reyes. He  _ likes  _ his job. And sure, his method of joining them was forced, and not ideal in the least, but they gave him a home nonetheless, and he was loathe to lie to them. After everything that’s happened, after losing everything over and over again, he does not want to lose another family. Not because of this.

The two sides are clawing at each other within him, a battle between halves of Jesse that have become disjointed. One of them is in love with Hanzo Shimada, and the other one, well, it remembers how much it hurt when his mother disappeared, and his sister with her too. One trying in vain to drown itself in the depths within Hanzo’s eyes, the other feverishly warning him of the consequences that would reap.

Despite that battle, something in him was resigned. He knew what choice he had already made. 

He would not betray Hanzo. 

Jesse pushes the pad to the side, and runs his hands through his hair. God, he wishes he was never assigned this mission. But  _ God _ , he’s so glad he was.

He gets ready quickly, pulling on an undershirt that probably needs a wash and shucking a button-up over it. The air outside hums with the oncoming summer, not quite to the same pitch as it will be in a few months, but you can taste it on the breeze that it is fast approaching. Light, thick and golden, warms Jesse’s face as he dresses, and he feels a bit better.

Hanzo hasn’t been to the garden in four days. Jesse’s not sure if he’s been avoiding him, or is on one of his ‘trips’ that he refuses to go into detail of. His anxiety warns him that it is almost definitely positively the former, and he tells it to fuck off, but it doesn’t. By the time he arrives, threading through a crowd of people eager to enjoy the late spring sunlight, he’s gone into hyperawareness against his choice, and the simple even beat of his heart roars in his ears like a hurricane.

When he sees the figure standing in front of the dragon statue, that heart nearly bursts.

Jesse can’t control himself. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s running towards him and scooping him up in his arms, spinning him around like they’re in some cheesy movie. He is heavier than McCree expected, and smells faintly of soap and some kind of plant, his eyes glitter with amusement as he is lifted and he laughs, rough and musical, as he reciprocates Jesse’s unexpected embrace.

“I didn’t know you missed me so much,” Hanzo teases when Jesse finally sets him back on the ground. His face is red and flushed, and McCree is sure that his is the same, but he cannot move himself to pull away. His arms are still wrapped around his waist, and if he focuses, he can feel his heartbeat, at least he thinks he can. The contact is almost overwhelming, and Jesse feels as if he’s about to melt into the ground.

Both seem to realize what they’re doing a moment later, and Hanzo removes himself from Jesse’s arms too hastily for his liking, pushing a lock of black hair behind his ear. His absence leaves Jesse feeling cold and somewhat embarrassed, and he rubs at his arm, trying to occupy his jumping nerves.

“Where’ve ya been, darlin’?” he asks, resisting the urge to pace. Hanzo sighs.

“I promise, I didn’t mean to abandon you so long. I had.... work to do.” There is a ghost of pain and disgust on his face, one that Jesse has never seen before, and he reflects momentarily on just how much Hanzo has opened up since he met him. 

“It’s all right. I wish- I wish you would warn me...”

“I wish I could too, but unfortunately, such things are not within my power.” Hanzo shakes his head. “Let us not think of such matters. I have a plan for today, and I will be upset if it does not work.” 

He smirks, and takes Jesse’s hand in his. “Are you willing to follow and trust me, Jesse?”

“To the ends of the earth.”

The answer is too honest, too true, and it falls out of Jesse’s mouth a second before he can catch it. But Hanzo smiles, and his eyes twinkle in the sunlight, and he knows he said the right thing. 

Hanzo takes his hand, and whisks him away. They walk away, not to the cupola, but back, back to the streets of Hanamura and the secrets that lie within, and it is there that Hanzo’s day begins.

He takes Jesse down the streets, to hidden alcoves tucked away in alleys, to tiny delights he would have never known how to find on his own. They see a shop barely bigger than a closet, covered in miniatures of gods and demons, the wares seemingly being the fortunes the ancient woman behind the desk offers for five hundred  _ yen _ . They find a mural that you can only see if you slip behind a particular set of dumpsters behind a particular cafe, and behind those is a view of a jewel-bright  _ kirin,  _ watching over a golden plain, the sun rising behind its regal head.

Hanzo guides him through corridors where laundry hangs from between the windows of houses and a mysterious amount of parakeets seem to live wild, and Jesse follows him through the channels of the marketplace he saw all those months ago, where he bought the matcha cake to share. The two see all manner of everyday miracles, ordinary treasures, each one filling Jesse with wonder, the experience only improved by the fact that Hanzo is at his side.

It is  _ wonderful _ . Everywhere they stop, Hanzo has some quip, some story to tell. He drapes a sparkling cloth around Jesse’s neck in one shop, and comments on how it makes his eyes glitter. At a tiny bun stall tucked underneath a skinny tree on the sidewalk, he shoves a warm pastry into his hands and eagerly asks what he thinks. Jesse loses himself in the simple kindness of it all, the joy of being close to the man he is falling deeper and deeper in love with every moment he stays near him.

The daylight begins to fade, and with it dark clouds, heavy with rain, roll in. Hanzo frowns at them, his face starkly lit against the golden light from the bakery behind them.

“That’s inconvenient,” he mumbles, not really talking to anybody but himself. Somewhere along the way, he has obtained a few plastic bags laden with anonymous goods, Jesse cannot see the contents from behind the clouded plastic. Hanzo huffs and unexpectedly enters the bakery, then emerges a few moments later, shuffling yet another bag on his wrist.

“Hey, the day ain’t ruined,” Jesse says as he falls into stride beside him. “I’d enjoy watchin’ it with you anyhow.”

“Watching what?”

“The rain.” He smiles fondly, remembering something he had kept buried away. “Where I’m from, rain is a precious commodity. When it came around, my ma would call us to the porch, and we’d all sit and watch it for a while, long as we could. It was special.”

“Special.” He flinches out of his reverie, and looks to see Hanzo smiling gently at him, a look on his face that Jesse had never seen before. It was soft and sweet, his eyes crinkling at the edges in the way that people’s do when they are watching somebody they love, and Jesse feels his face grow hot under it.

“Yeah.” He rubs his neck, looking away, hoping that Hanzo won’t notice the flush on his cheeks. “So, y’know, I don’t much mind a little rain.”

The two trace their steps back, even as the world changes with the weather around them. Outdoor vendors unfurl brightly colored umbrellas, shielding their wares from the rain. Neon lights flicker on inside windows, advertising services as rain begins to drip down the glass. Even through the unsavoury weather, Jesse can tell that nighttime is fast approaching, the shadows darkening as the sun sets below the clouds.

They arrive at the gates of the garden after evening has set in, and streams of people file past them as they make their way in. McCree can see that the gardens are almost empty, and even spots park attendants waiting to close up after the guests, yet Hanzo pushes inside confidently, not even sparing the weary gardeners a glance. One of them is holding a scowling Neko in her arms, and Jesse waves slightly at the cat as he passes, holding some fellow feeling for it.

Inside the park, the shadows of dusk make everything change. What was once a lush green is now painted in shades of blue and grey, colors muted under the budding moonlight. Unexpectedly, there are lights twinkling in the trees, strung up between branches and making them appear lit by fairies. Jesse follows Hanzo as if in a daze, rain still falling in a mild drizzle over the scene.

Hanzo leads him through the brush of the garden, striding ahead without missing a beat, even though the park is eerily silent. At first, Jesse thinks that he’s taking them to the cupola, but when he instead pushes through a familiar patch of undergrowth, he is greeted with the crowned hill above the lake, where the pair of them watched the light show. It feels so long ago that he saw Hanzo that star-speckled night, a king in the grass, and fell in love.

Hanzo eagerly sits on the sprawled, thick roots at the base of the plant, and sets his bags beside him. “Are you hungry, Jesse?”

“Uh, I could eat, yeah,” he supplies as he takes his spot next to him. His companion is subtly excited, and a smile is constantly dancing at the corners of his mouth. Jesse can’t help but feel enthusiastic too.

Hanzo begins to pull things Jesse hadn’t even seen him buy from the bags. Soft buns still hot in their basket, cases of sweet treats in fantastic shapes, food that scents the air with spice; all of these things and more come out of the bags, and before he knows it, his mouth starts to water.

“This is all for us?” he asks, even as he scoots closer to the feast. Hanzo chuckles.

“I don’t see anyone else around,” he comments with a grin.

The rain slows to a stop not long after, and Jesse obeys the order. The moon rises over the lake, heavy and full in the sky, and between bites, Hanzo tells him the story of how the moon is a giant dragon’s pearl, suspended in the celestial river that is the heavens. As the night whiles on, and the anxiety in Jesse’s belly softens into a glowing sense of bliss in the pit of his stomach, and all the while he and Hanzo are shifting closer and closer, until their shoulders press together, warm and safe.

“I have to admit,” Hanzo murmurs after a long stretch of content silence. “I didn’t do all this for no reason. Not that I need a reason, but I have one now. Tonight. With you.”

Jesse almost feels unconcerned as he looks over at him. Hanzo is staring up with his sharp eyes, glinting with distant stars and the light from the moon, and he’s so drunk on love that he nearly doesn’t register the words he says. Unfortunately, they glance home, and a spike of sudden tension makes his tongue grow thick in his mouth and sets butterflies loose in his stomach.

“And what would that be?” he manages to ask between his nerves pinging with energy, and oh, he’s so  _ close  _ now. He can feel a hand entwine with his, a familiar one, and they’re so close to touching that he feels his breath ghost his jawline.

“Jesse McCree,” Hanzo whispers in the moonlight, just for him, “I like you very, very much.”

And then he leans forwards and kisses him.

Kissing Hanzo is nothing like he imagined. His mouth is cold and soft from the rain, and he tastes like buns and powdered sugar, sweet and spicy from the meal they just ate. It’s short, and chaste, and it takes Jesse’s breath away in one simple press of lips, gentle and sweet and so  _ him _ . When he pulls away, he leaves McCree almost gasping, eyes wide and mind completely, blissfully  _ empty _ .

Hanzo watches him carefully, disappointment and fear threatening to bubble over in his eyes. When Jesse does not speak for a moment, he bows his head slightly, avoiding his gaze. “I-I’m sorry. I must have misread your attentions-”

“No, no.” Jesse speaks as if in a trance- and in a way, he is, still reeling from the kiss, still spellbound by him. “I think- I think I like you very much too.”

It’s him who leans in this time, and Hanzo does not pull away.


	10. fool's game/shimada castle

Gabe always liked to tease Jesse about his love life.

_ A sucker for a handsome gentleman, aren’t you, Jess?  _ had said after one mission, ruffling his hair with one big hand.  _ Can’t stop you from making doe-eyes at every pretty boy you see! _

He wasn’t wrong. Jesse wasn’t normally shy about admitting when he found someone attractive, and rarely beat around the bush when it came to telling them; it was always better to be frank and deal with rejection if it came. 

But God, he had never fallen in love like this.

In the days that followed, Hanzo and Jesse barely left each other’s sides. They became familiar with the feeling of each other’s lips, and the way their fingers slotted together. They nestled, quiet and safe, in their cupola, light lancing through the open arches and the inside refreshingly cool, and whiled away hours draped over each other, tracing invisible runes into the other’s skin. Jesse ran his hands through Hanzo’s hair- so smooth under his fingers, just like he thought it would be- and his partner would laugh and pull him closer, to kiss at his jaw.

Things they had done before gained new meaning. Stories were told leaning into each other’s arms, strong and safe, and listening to the sound of laughter through his chest. They explored the depths of the gardens now that summer was here, poking into secluded corners and wide pavilions where children played with chalk. The lake, where the light show had happened, proved to be delightfully chilly in the heat, and they spent days idly swimming, then retreating into the trees if anyone came near, laughing all the while.

The outside of the gardens proved glorious as well. Summer made the streets burst with life and color, and Jesse and Hanzo spent countless hours investigating both new and old, no alleyway off-bounds for their quests. One old woman, an acquaintance of Hanzo’s, tending her tiny stall of steaming woks, cooed at them when they came for a visit, teasingly saying something in Japanese that Hanzo went rather red at before snapping at her with little bite in his tone. Jesse and the woman both laughed, and he pushed at them, but he was smiling too.

The days slipped by and turned into weeks, and those into months. Sunlight lengthened, and the world outside hummed with heat, flowers opening and greenery everywhere you looked. Not every day was ended with a parting kiss between them; Jesse woke up more than once tucked against the smooth skin of Hanzo’s back and the warmth of his body. Intimacy became a regular thing, as Jesse runs his fingers over the intricate tattoo that spills up his arm, and felt Hanzo trace against the scars that littered his body.

There were still things that remained unspoken between them. Hanzo would still disappear for days, and say nothing about where he’d been, although his eagerness to bury himself in Jesse’s presence was markedly higher afterwards. Hanzo read the lettering on McCree’s arm and said nothing, knowing, somehow, that some things shouldn’t be shared. That was all right. They understood.

It’s late summer when Hanzo asks him the question. 

He’s sitting in Jesse’s hostel room, morning light falling on him and highlighting the curves of his back. The dragon on his shoulder seems almost alive in the glow, twisting up the flesh like it is real, and for a moment, McCree fancies that if it was, it would be the same ozone-glare of the dragon in the light show.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, and he means it more than the words could possibly express. Hanzo smiles, and falls back on the bed, landing with a thump and reaching up to tangle his fingers with his. There is something in his his eyes, something melancholy and strange, and Jesse wriggles closer.

They end up in a tangle, with Jesse lazily kissing down his neck, no real heat in the gesture, just simple affection. Hanzo is loose, pliant, almost disinterested, he nuzzles into Jesse’s hair and seems more content to cling to him nearly idly, looking at something very far away.

“Are you all right?” Jesse asks, stopping to rest his head in the curve of Hanzo’s shoulder and run a hand absentmindedly down his arm. The swell of muscle there never fails to amaze him; he is stronger than Jesse by far, and it’s incredibly attractive.

“Yes.” Hanzo rubs his eyes with a free hand. “No.”

“Which one is it?”

“It’s no.” Hanzo sighs, and brings that same hand up to card it into McCree’s hair, running it through his fingers. “I’ve been thinking about things, and wondering, and weighing options. All of those.”

“Penny for your thoughts, sweetheart?”

“Mm.” Hanzo’s hand begins to trace lazy circles on his arm. “Before I ask you this, please understand that you have every right to refuse me. I do not ask you it lightly, and I understand that it may be a difficult choice.”

Jesse’s eyes narrow slightly, and he inhales deeply, cooling the worry that shoots through his spine. “Yeah. I understand.”

“I,” Hanzo says his words carefully, slowly, like he’s planning out every inflection and dip in his cadence, “want you, to come and live with me.”

The question is so unexpected, so out of the blue, that Jesse has to take a moment to remember how to breathe.

“I am a Shimada. I told you that, when I misjudged you rather severely at our first meeting. I am guessing that you know that I live in the castle.” Hanzo’s voice is there, steady but distant, and McCree listens on a different plane. “It is a difficult choice, I know, and it’s fine if you want to answer me at a later date-”

Jesse McCree was sent to Hanamura to gather intelligence on the infamous Shimada Clan.

Jesse McCree was supposed to target Hanzo Shimada, the young heir to the clan, and win his trust.

Jesse McCree fell in love with his target instead.

And now Jesse McCree is now being formally invited, by said target, into the stronghold of his enemy, with no idea who he really is.

The word “yes” falls out of his mouth before he can catch it, and the lights in Hanzo’s eyes nearly manage to jolt him out of his reverie. He draws Jesse closer, humming with joy, and McCree falls into him like a drowning man grasping at straws; he loses himself in kisses and touches and feelings, all while a voice whispers in the back of his head:

_ What have you done? What have you done? _

Shimada Castle is big.

Very big.

Jesse stands at the gates and feels himself shrink in its massive shadow, an elegant monolith of wood and architectural majesty. They had long left the outer gardens behind, and even with only a thin wall separating the two, they feel like two completely different universes. He follows Hanzo through meticulously groomed landscapes hushed not with the gentle quiet of peacefulness, but the rigid, uncomfortable silence of solitude. From what he can see, they are the only two humans in the entire space.

The worst part though, by far, is Hanzo. With every step they take, Jesse can feel the iciness that grows over him, a sharp and deadly cloak that he had long forgotten even existed. By the time the pair reach the front doors, the steeliness in Hanzo’s gaze and the chilling way he holds himself makes Jesse want to whimper; he knows that the frost is fake, manifested out of some old hurt that he is not yet privy to. Watching it take over is like watching the man he loves die, trapped underneath a cloying shell.

The doors open nigh-soundlessly, despite their clear age, and he and Hanzo are greeted with the gaping, dim cavern inside. Hanzo strides in confidently, rigid, his head held high, a certain jagged nature to his posture that truly makes McCree appreciate the fact that he is the master here. Yet even with that, he seems almost swallowed up by the size of the place, dwarfing him and making him seem insignificant in comparison.

A woman approaches from the shadows, and ignores Jesse completely, speaking to his lover in rapid-fire Japanese that he cannot pick up on. Hanzo’s responses are short and sharp, nearly cruel in their intensity, the woman shrinks under them- and Jesse does too. He had forgotten that such poisonous tones were in his lover’s voice, and as the woman is dismissed and Hanzo leads him through more cavernous, haunting spaces, he is nearly afraid of him.

Despite the chill in the air, and the sense of dread Jesse feels in every corner of the place, Shimada Castle is beautiful. It’s a beauty far removed from soaring Western castles, with high buttresses and stained glass, but there’s a certain elegance to the building, a construction steeped in years of history and tradition. 

The two pass beautiful painted tapestries depicting gods and dragons; huge rooms sparkling with ancient artifacts and more simple, exquisitely decorated living spaces. There’s one room that Jesse only catches a glimpse of, as Hanzo unexpectedly speeds up a bit when walking past, studiously ignoring it. It looks almost like an altar, with scrolls underneath a painting depicting- he thinks- a pair of dragons, in blue and green. 

When they finally reach their destination, a smallish living space with a view of the gardens and the distant sound of the river playing somewhere, Hanzo melts against the door. Jesse turns to look at him, and his heart pangs in his chest, full of affection and longing.

He looks broken here. Different. There is a certain coldness in his eyes that wasn’t there before, a certain rigidness in his hands that he thought had faded. He doesn’t look like Hanzo Shimada, the man he loves, anymore. Now he looks like the man on the datapad screen, cold and unhappy, flinty-eyed and unyielding. He looks like the man who killed Genji.

Jesse wraps his arms around him, and feels him thaw into the embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.  “I thought having you here, closer to me- it would make me feel better. Safer.”

“Are you not glad I’m here? Do you want me to leave?” Jesse pulls back, leans his forehead on the other man’s. Hanzo chuckles, but it is not a happy laugh.

“No, no. I am, I don’t want you to go. It’s just... nothing is ever simple in his life. Especially for me.”

Hanzo pushes him away gently, then goes to the balcony, opening the shutters. Waning evening light floods the room in rich gold, painting everything flat and angular. He watches Hanzo lean on the railing, the wind shifting his hair ever so little, and sigh deeply, his eyes cast in shadow by the falling sun.

“I love you,” he says, as if it’ll fix things. As if it’ll take the ice out of Hanzo’s heart, shoo the ghosts trapped in the castle walls.

“I love you too,” Hanzo says as he joins him, leaning on Jesse’s arm in a solid, comforting weight. They stay together for a while, watching the sun fall, listening to the distant river. Jesse barely knows where he is anymore; the place is so far removed from Hanamura that it seems like a distant memory.

And as he watches, and waits, Jesse notices that the leaves in the trees are beginning to turn brown.


	11. a dragon and his brother

Time moves slower in Shimada Castle.

Jesse discovers this fact very quickly. Here, what would have been seconds is an eternity. Here, a day stretches on forever, and every night, he feels like a completely different person. He swears that he grows wrinkles.

The two escape as much as they can. Jesse understands why the castle isn’t Hanzo’s favorite place in Hanamura; it’s a wonder he can even stand being in the gardens, close as it is. 

There are certain nice things about it. It’s a beautiful building, and one rainy day, where they’re both tired and sore, Hanzo guides him to places that he clearly remembers with fondness. A closet holding row upon row of dusty kimonos, perfect for hiding in. A very small zen garden, with a very small fishpond, holding a pair of energetic goldfish. Behind the kitchens, which are strangely silent, and childish drawings are inscribed with pencil on the walls, faded from many days of existence. In all of these places, Hanzo smiles, but he also seems to shrink, years falling off him as he travels. He is seeing memories that Jesse cannot, and he can’t tell if it’s good or bad.

Mostly, however, they go out. The circle of Hanamura that McCree is familiar with widens with every passing day, and Hanzo seems to know the entire city like the back of his hand. Autumn brings in intermittent showers, and the city is always glossy with water, making everything gleam in the patches of sunlight. They go to karaoke, and they’re terrible at it. They kiss a lot, and get better at it. Outside the castle, the world goes on.

Whenever Jesse gets a moment that seems perfect here in the castle, he feels like he’s stealing it. Little pieces of his day where Hanzo smiles in just the right manner to take his breath away, or traces a line down his back in the exact way that makes him run hot and cold. Every one feels like he’s snuck in and taken them, snatched right from under the invisible, cold eyes that watch your every move within the building. It thrills him, and makes the moments sweeter, but there’s a measure of guilt with them too.

Like right now. It’s raining yet again, and has been all day, with no sign of letup. The air is cool here, as the window is open, and the rain makes soft noises wherever it hits, gentle  _ pat-pat _ s that combine into a soothing white-noise symphony. Jesse is wrapped up in a blanket, datapad open to a book he’s been reading in one hand, but he’s not paying attention to it. 

At the balcony, leaning on the railing, staring into the gray sky, Hanzo is watching memories. That’s what Jesse’s mother always called it, the hobby of staring into space and letting your mind replay what it wished, watching memories on the backdrop of the sky.

Before he knows it, Jesse is humming. It’s an old song- very old, long before either of them- but he finds it true to what he feels, and the lyrics taste sweet on his tongue:  _ wise men say, only fools rush in... _

He supposes he’s a fool then. That’s fine by him.

“What are you singing?” Hanzo asks, and Jesse jolts slightly. His lover joins him on the low couch, smelling of rain and his hair glittering with moisture, and nestles up to his side, twining their fingers together.

“An old love song. Makes me think of you.” Jesse snorts. “Don’t mind me, I’m just a lovesick dumbass. I’m prob’ly bein’ far too sappy for you, hon.”

Hanzo takes a moment, smiling softly. “I want to hear it,” he whispers, and Jesse complies, his voice scratchy and delicate in the rain. Hanzo is warm against his side, and by the end of the song they’re humming in tandem, leaning into each other like the other is their only support in the world.

“You said the song reminds you of me?” Hanzo murmurs after it is done, and they have let the notes fade into the rain. “Funny. It makes  _ me  _ think of  _ you _ .”

Jesse flushes, and he captures him in a kiss, and he loses himself in him. In his warmth, and love, and the feeling of his mouth and the sparkle in his eyes- he is intoxicating, mesmerizing, and Jesse wants nothing more than to be trapped there, in him, forever.

In moments like that, it’s easy to forget the outside world. In that moment, he forgets about Blackwatch back at home, and about Hanzo’s increasingly odd behavior, and the spirits trapped in the castle walls. He forgets that summer is over, and autumn is already here, and that every fallen leaf is a ticking clock.

Perhaps that’s why that very night, he wakes up, and Hanzo is gone.

The rain is still here, singing in the background, playing a faint beat that muffles the world and makes Jesse feel very small and very caged. He stands up in the gloom, bare-chested and cold, and wraps a robe around himself. There is something calling him, and he is not scared. Not yet.

Darkness. That’s the only word that really describes it. It is dark, ever so dark, and Jesse walks with it, feeling it press on his skin. The floors make faint creaks under his feet, creaks that are amplified, somehow, and return to him twofold. Somehow, this place seems truer to reality than the castle was before, with the wood stripped away and the light gone. This was where the spirits of the Shimada clan lived, here in their shadow palace. This was the place that watched Jesse from every corner.

But there was a light.

It was faint at first, but his eyes caught it, an electric blue glow like a cloud of miniscule fireflies. It calls to him, and he answers, following it down the yawning, cavernous halls, and as he does it thickens, gains more shape. Scales grow, then fur, then supernova-eyes, and suddenly Jesse is following the tail end of a dragon, slipping in and out of his vision, glowing in the gloom. He’s not sure it’s real, but somehow, it doesn’t bother him. It is calling, and he must follow.

There’s a glow in the shadows. Not the unreliable, ethereal glow of the dragon, but the warm, golden glow of candlelight. The dragon guides him towards it, and he follows its lead, and there is Hanzo, sitting in front of the scroll, trapped in a ball of light. A pair of twin dragons, both blue, flash on either side of him, and then they’re gone.

“Jesse,” Hanzo whispers as he walks in. He turns, and his eyes are wet. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“You were calling me,” Jesse replies, and sits down next to him. Hanzo sighs, presses their arms together, links their fingers. Two trapped in a golden bubble.

“I need to tell you something. A story.” he murmurs, and above him, the eyes of the tapestry dragons flash- one blue, one green. A pair that should never be broken.

“Long ago,” Hanzo begins, his voice uncharacteristically unsteady, “there was a dragon. A dragon and his brother.”

“Ever since they were born, the two were inseparable. They grew together, learned together, played together. The world, for them, was lonely and cold, because the rest of the dragons had gone far away, and no matter how hard they looked, the dragon brothers could not find them. So they took solace in each other.” Hanzo’s voice threatened to break, just for a moment. “They were each other’s whole worlds, because the world did not offer them any other kindnesses.”

“Eventually, though, the dragon brothers grew up. The older brother, jaded from so many years of having nothing, refused to get attached to anything more than his sibling. But the younger brother became curious about the world below, and began to visit it, and found that he enjoyed the company of the humans, and they enjoyed his in turn. And so he learned the joy of the world around him, something he had thought did not exist, while his older brother stayed away, and learned nothing.”

“Time went on like this. The younger brother learned much, and although he got into trouble, he was happier. Wiser. Meanwhile, the older brother’s heart hardened, and plagued by envy and guilt and many other words which even now he cannot put a name to, he gave in to his bad feelings. So one night, he waited for his brother’s return- for the younger brother still loved his sibling dearly, even if they had grown apart, and returned to him no matter what- and he-”

Hanzo took a deep, shuddering breath. “He bared his claws and cut his brother down where he stood, and his brother died.”

“As soon as he saw the blood on his talons and the consequences of his acts, the older brother roared in anguish, for he had let his own cowardice and envy swallow him whole, and it had taken the one thing he loved from him. And to this day, he remains, trapped in a cage, and his heart grows as cold and ice and stone.”

Hanzo looks up at him now, the candlelight glinting off the tears in his eyes. Above them, the dragons twist on their tapestry- one alive, one dead. A dragon who had killed his brother.

“Jesse,” Hanzo whispers, his voice hollow, “I did something very wrong.”

He doesn’t have words. None come to his lips. So he just pulls Hanzo closer, and closes his eyes.


	12. cross my heart

He should have known, then, that it was falling apart. In hindsight, it had been from the moment he entered the castle; like a fool, he had ignored it, and pretended that the crumbling wasn’t happening at all.

Hanzo’s story was a breaking point. Afterwards, he becomes more distant, more scared. He tries to reciprocate Jesse’s affectionate gestures, only to shy away before anything genuine. It hurt, but he didn’t push him.

The days lengthened, even though the nights got longer. Every second was a sluggish crawl to the next, every moment getting even more extended until the sun finally fell, and Jesse was much, much older than he’d been before. Trees slowly turn red and shed their leaves like papery tears, coating everything in a fine layer of leaf litter; it makes the ground carmine and yellow, an environment painted with fire. 

They try to leave as often as they can. Hanzo never disappears anymore, Jesse can usually find him within minutes, frequently less. A few rooms are the only places they feel safe, and Jesse knows every inch of them within just a couple of those eternity-days. He never sees the scroll room again. He doesn’t want to.

Even when they go out, things are different. Hanzo is still cut-off, and nothing Jesse can do can bring him back fully. They wander the gardens, their footsteps crunching in the dying plants, and it is there that they find a small measure of what they once had. They visit the cupola, and find that the dragon kite has fallen from his thread, and the copper bird followed, puncturing the fragile paper with its sharp wings. They leave them lying on the tile, forever tangled together in a broken, stationary dance.

During all this, trying desperately to regain the happiness they once had, trying to patch the holes in Hanzo’s heart, Jesse forgets. He forgets about his mission, about the people waiting for intel that would never come. He forgets about the messages that have been racking up in his silence, and about the audio bugs she’s supposed to install.

But most importantly, he forgets that it’s autumn. He forgets about the time slipping by with the falling leaves and the rain.

He forgets about the video call.

One night, Jesse and Hanzo regain a bit of happiness. The sky is clear, the moon is bright, and they discover what they had lost, if only for a little while. Their rooms are safe, and within them, McCree is gifted with his lover’s smile, and sweet voice, and the feeling of his mouth again. It’s like a little bubble, keeping all the ghosts away, and they both welcome it with open arms. Given this chance, they fall into each other, to keep the fire inside smoldering. It is gentle, and loving, and everything that Jesse was beginning to think he would never see again. He is still very much in love with Hanzo Shimada.

Jesse rouses a few hours later, by something he is too drowsy to properly place. The room is dark now, all the lights extinguished, and the blank light from the heavy moon is all that remains to illuminate the space. In its glare, everything is painted with thick panes of white and black, making him feel like he’s trapped in a house made of colored cards. The world is flat, and things stare in from the darkness; seeing him while he cannot see them.

There. That noise. It’s what woke him up for sure. He can hear it clearly now- a faint but incessant pinging, something irritating on purpose. It is familiar. Where does he know it from-

His data-pad.

_ Blackwatch. _

The realization hits him like ice water, and fizzes in his nerve endings, sparking with urgency. He leaps out of bed and practically lunges across the room to his bag, throwing clothes wildly as he digs for it. Jesse pulls it out and brandishes it like a shield in front of him, swiping right before he can even think about the consequences.

What is he supposed to say? What can he do? 

He can lie. Just like all the other times. He can survive the bitter taste in his mouth, and the guilt that settles at his stomach. Lord knows he’s done worse.

The call bubbles out into a feed before he can think any further, and Alcina appears, pupils blown with anxiety. She’s twitchy, he can tell, and her eyes flick from side to side almost faster than he can see. She’s not wearing her band. Something is wrong- and he’s willing to bet that it’s not just because of him.

“Jesse!” she hisses as soon as she catches his eyes. “What the  _ fuck  _ do you think you’re doing?! I haven’t heard from you in months! I thought you weren’t going to pick up for the longest time- are you wearing pants? What the fuck-”

“Quiet- quiet, now listen to me!” Jesse whispers as best he can manage. She is loud, so loud,  _ too  _ loud. Her voice fills his ears like television static. “I can’t explain right now, okay? There’s a lot of reasons and-”

“What the fuck do you mean, you can’t fucking explain?” She’s practically vibrating with anxiety now, and he notices how raw and bitten her lower lip is. “Do you even  _ know  _ what kind of shit’s been going on over here?”

“No, but-”

She’s practically shouting now, at least to his ears, and he cringes, hands white on the datapad. “Something is very, very wrong, Jesse, and your incompetence is only a tiny part of it! There are omnics acting up, and people acting up, and it looks like we’re about to have a full-scale fucking  _ war  _ on our hands if we don’t act soon!”

“Wh- war? With who?”

“The omnics, you thick fuck!” She needed to be  _ quiet _ \- “And there you are, failing to even  _ find  _ that Hanzo asshole, which isn’t making my life much easier! We need that intelligence  _ now _ , Jesse, or your ass is on the line in many more ways that just one, because if I get fired because of your stupidity, I swear to God, I  _ will  _ haunt you for the rest of my mortal life and eternal rest too-”

There is something poking into his back.

Alcina’s voice tunes out as he feels cold, sharp steel between his shoulders. A chill runs down his spine. Someone is behind him, and holding a sword to his back; it twitches, and stings as it breaks his skin, a droplet of blood tracing down his muscles to fall on the floor.

“Drop the pad,” they snarl, and he knows the voice.

Jesse closes the call in the middle of Alcina’s rant, and drops the device on his clothing pile. His entire brain has just frozen. Everything is in perfect clarity, still and chilly as stone. The only thing that breaks the feeling is the despair that is quickly pooling in his belly, and that is colder than any ice.

He turns around, and there is Hanzo, painted in moonlight, holding a weapon to his chest.

“Han, I-” A quick flick, and the sword is pointed at his mouth instead.

“I’m not interested,” Hanzo growls, but his voice is unsteady. Light glints off his eyelashes, which are speckled with tiny beads of water. 

“How much did you hear?” Jesse whispers. The sword quivers in the air.

“Enough,” Hanzo retorts, and he nearly flinches. No matter how bad things got, no matter how distant he was, Hanzo had  _ never  _ turned that tone of his voice on him. Jesse had thought that he would never hear it firsthand, and yet here they are, flinty eyes pinning him down in squares of white light.

They remain this way for a while, until finally,  _ finally _ , something inside Hanzo snaps.

“How long?” he asks, and Jesse can hear the threat of tears in his voice. “How long were you with them?”

What can he do but tell the truth? “The entire time. I’ve been a member of Blackwatch since they killed my gang over a decade ago.”

“What were you sent here to do?”

“Intelligence mission. On the Shimada-gumi.” He gulps, and the sword twitches to his neck. Tears prick his eyes, and he blinks them away. “They wanted- they wanted me to get inside the family by way of- by way of you, Han, please-”

“Stop the pet names,” Hanzo threatens, but his voice is shaking audibly now. “I’m not interested in your  _ mockery _ , especially after you took my emotions and  _ used  _ me like a  _ tool!” _

He’s crying. Jesse can see them track down his face, gleaming silver in the light. Something is wet on his face too, but he doesn’t much care. 

“I didn’t- I swear it, I didn’t! Hanzo-”

“Tell me,” he growls, “why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand.”

He could. Jesse knows it, and Hanzo does too. With a simple slash of his blade, he could slit his throat and leave him to bleed away on the floorboards, under the sinister gaze of the dragon who had killed his brother. If he wasn’t careful, that dragon would kill his lover, too.

But the time was long past for charm and games, and so Jesse resorted to all he had left.

The truth.

“Because I didn’t lie,” he says. Hanzo narrows his eyes. 

“What? You’re lying even now-”

“I  _ didn’t _ lie,” he insists, cutting him off somehow. And somehow, he’s able to keep talking. “I didn’t lie about- about any of it. About my ma, and my family, and all the stories I told- they were true. And I never told about you, either. Not a single word. I swear it- on my ma’s grave, I swear.”

Hanzo knows that it’s true. He can see it in his eyes. He heard Alcina complaining about his performance, about the lack of information. He wasn’t lying then, and he isn’t lying now.

“And I never lied about how much I love you,” he whispers. It’s almost an afterthought, something that seems small and insignificant in the situation, but Hanzo flinches, steps back. The sword falls to the ground in a clang of sharpened metal, and Jesse finally breathes again.

Breathe in. Breathe out. One, two, one, two, silence-

“You have to leave,” Hanzo chokes out. “You have to go. Now.”

“Wh-” Jesse barely gets a word out before Hanzo gathers up his bag and now darkened pad and shoves them into his arms. He’s crying profusely now; the tears glitter when they fall, like tiny crystals.

“You can’t stay. My family- I tried to disable the recorders, but they always reinstall them eventually, so they can keep an eye on me. If they find out about you-” Hanzo chokes out a sob, and pushes more into his arms. “You have to  _ leave! _ ”

“I’m not leavin’ you here!” Jesse cries, and Hanzo pulls back. His face is unreadable past the raw misery contained on it; he looks up at him with puffy, tearstained eyes, and watches him with a frantic intensity. “You hate it here just as much as I do. Please, Han, don’t.”

“What choice do we have?” Hanzo whispers. 

“You can come with me. We can run away.” Jesse steps forward, drops his stuff, and pulls him closer. He’s shaking, almost violently so, and he knows that he’s shaking right along with him. “We can run away so far that they’d never be able to find us, never ever, and I’d keep lovin’ you until I died, and we’d be safe.”

He can barely choke the words out by the end, and Hanzo is looking up at him, eyes wet and hands gripping his shoulders like he never wanted to let go. Jesse doesn’t want him to let go, ever, and so he holds on tight too.

“You mean it?” he whispers, and their foreheads are touching now. Jesse leans into him, face bleached by the moonlight, pale and beautiful and everything he’s ever wanted.

“Of course.” he whispers right back. “Cross my heart.”

“I love you,” Hanzo says, and Jesse hears the resignation in his tone, and knows he has lost. “I love you more than I can say, and more than I ever will be able to say, but no.  _ Go _ .”

Everything is flat, and the wind bites at his skin. His stuff is in his bag, slung over his shoulder. There’s a path to the outer gardens, down the tree outside the balcony. The moon is far away, and it watches indifferently, a sentinel disattached from the world below.

If he breathes in, he can almost pick up the faint scent of cherries, and convince himself that it is spring.

He only turns around once. One time, just before he vaults onto the tree. He sees Hanzo standing in the light, cut out of card like the rest of his world, a creature of light and dark with trails of silver on his cheeks. At his feet are the ghosts of dragons.

“I’ll find you again, I promise,” he swears in the moonlight, and Hanzo smiles, but there is no glow in his eyes.

“And I you,” Hanzo says, or at least, he thinks he says. Because he’s already gone, down the tree and through the leaf litter, heading for the break in the wall. It’s dark, darker than it has ever been before, and the wind is howling somewhere. He can hear yelling coming from behind him, from the castle- at least he thinks he can, maybe, maybe, but the wind is loud and it howls inside him where he is so  _ empty _ -

Light. Sound. He is wandering the streets of Hanamura without knowing how he got there. He’s getting lost now, twisting in circles. He knows these streets, he’s been down them before, but there’s a void where a person should be, and without him, he is confused, scared, lonely-

He’s sitting in a bar that flashes with neon lights in the darkness, carrying a bag stuffed with clothes that are probably still his. He can’t read the menu, but gets a drink anyway, and downs it without noticing how it tastes. There’s a foreign but familiar language in his ears, one he’s used to but doesn’t understand, and now there’s a man sitting next to him with his hand on his thigh. He nearly reciprocates- nearly, nearly- until a flash of light illuminates his face, and it’s  _ wrong,  _ and Jesse pushes him away and feels tears poke at his eyes again-

There. He recognizes this place, finally. A home, of sorts, better than the one he’s left behind. He stumbles inside, forgetting when, exactly, he became drunk, and falls to the floor, smooth and wooden; there’s a faint scream and someone with very cold hands is pawing at him, asking him if he’s all right, if he needs help-

And then nothing, and it goes dark.

Jesse wakes in the morning to Kinzoku’s blank face. She is expressionless, as always, but the moment she speaks the worry can be heard in her tone.

“Oh, mister McCree, you’re awake! I found you on the lobby floor, you looked to be in a bad way, I’m sorry I couldn’t take you to your room...”

He tunes her out, opens his bag and pulls out his datapad. Icons fill every corner of the screen. A series of frantic messages from Alcina, some very angry ones from Calida and a few of increasing rage from Gabe are just a few that McCree spots at first glance, not to mention assorted ones from friends. Splashed over that, however, are warnings, official Blackwatch military grade: 

_ Omnics moving in southern London. Available personnel should be on high alert. _

_ First report of human-omnic violence has been observed. Teams should be on standby. _

_ Violence is reported throughout five sectors. Action is necessary. _

And, displayed prominently above all of them, is a single message in deep red. 

_ London has fallen. All available personnel should report to base immediately. _

There it was. A summons. An excuse.

He stands, and nearly falls back, but straightens a moment later. Kinzoku hovers anxiously nearby, saying nothing, but fidgeting with the hem of her shirt.

Jesse McCree takes in one last look at the hostel he had arrived in nearly half a year ago, a final glimpse of the place that had started something that would stretch farther than he could even imagine. He wishes he could stay. He wishes he had never even come.

Jesse looks Kinzoku in the eyes, murmurs a “thank you”, and leaves.

And this time, he does not turn back.


	13. closing - promises kept

On the day he arrives, Jesse hides.

It wasn’t very professional of him, or mature, but he decided it to be the safest option. Genji was the one who told him about it- bless his heart- and so he was given two choices: meet Hanzo at the landing, providing the recruitment and collection was successful, or hide in his room and hope that they never crossed paths, ever.

His heart doesn’t let him take the former. Jesse spends the day polishing his gun and boots, intermittently napping, playing with his cat and watching old, grainy Westerns on his pad. The few times he ventures out, for lunch and dinner mostly, not a hair of the older Shimada is seen, and he thanks every deity that might exist for that small blessing.

But Watchpoint is small, and before McCree realizes it, he’s seeing Hanzo everywhere. He passes his room on the way to training, sees his log on Athena when he signs into the shooting range, reads his name on the lockers. Hanzo is everywhere, and memories haunt his dreams, too sweet for him to truly spit out. He feels as if a string is wrapped around him, and it’s getting shorter, and on the other end is the man he once loved.

As time goes on, and a cross mark burns in his heart, Jesse is forced to accept something he’s been denying for over a decade: he is still very much in love with Hanzo Shimada.

So one day, when the wind is pleasant and the sunset is beautiful, one day where Jesse is staring out at the oranges and letting his thoughts drift away with the smoke from his cigar, and he hears footsteps come up the stairs to his balcony, he knows that he’s run out of time to hide.

Momentarily, he considers throwing himself down the cliff face. It’s not a viable option.

“Your cat guided me here,” comes a cool, clipped voice, achingly familiar yet startlingly strange, and sure enough, Tumbleweed leaps up on the railing to twine herself around Jesse’s arms.  _ Little traitor. _

“S’that so,” he drawls. Footsteps sound on the metal again, and now Hanzo is leaning next to him, staring out at the sun. 

“You have changed,” he murmurs. McCree grunts.

“So’ve you, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

“I do not.”

God, he’s so close. He can see his face out of the corner of his eye- familiar, but old, masked under years that Jesse has not been there to see with him. He should have  _ been there _ . He should have seen the way he changed a little bit every day until he was someone new, but the same.

It hurts, and his heart burns.

Finally, though, after many long minutes and ignored pointed stares, Hanzo sighs, and pulls away from the balcony. He’s halfway down the steps before Jesse moves to catch him; the contact is shocking, like he wasn’t expecting him to be solid. He turns and looks up at him, and McCree nearly sobs. 

Facing him are the same eyes, flinty but warm, kindness and ice in their depths. Once he had seen them open, and now he is smooth again, shielding himself from the outside world. For once, Jesse wants nothing more than to open them again.

“I kept my promise,” he says, before his brain can catch up with his heart. With one hand, he reaches up, and slashes two lines across his chest; a cross, directly over his heart.

And, painted in golden light, his eyes glinting bronze, Hanzo smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a very old story with a lot of my heart in it, and i'm so happy to finally be releasing it to the world, a year and two rewrites after my first conception of it! the big bang really helped me in motivation- i don't know what i would have done if i hadn't entered. cross my heart would probably have been sitting in my docs for months to come! you can listen to the playlist i made for this fic [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/rainbowphoenixfangirls/playlist/3VEmK2Kvdjat5g9vcMJ9Y8?si=D84CG5QZSXSaqP3PbVu9uw), as it helped me immesurably.
> 
> i worked with [aly](https://tusfu.tumblr.com/) on this project, who was a delightful presence and incredibly kind and understanding! her art for this piece was wonderful, and brought me nearly to tears. thank you for everything, aly! you can see her piece for this story [here](https://tusfu.tumblr.com/post/172239007408/my-bigbang-piece-for-rainphees-fic-cross-my).
> 
> thank you also to my beta; the person who ran this bb (dee, you're a star); and to everyone who reads this! i hope it was as fun- and emotional- to read as it was for me to write. i you want to talk to me about it, or see what i'm up to, or ask questions, feel free to contact me over at [my blog!](http://rainphee.tumblr.com/)


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